The power of voice technology: By everyone, for everyone

By Theodora Lau and Bradley Leimer of Unconventional Ventures

Can you hear my voice? Do you understand my language, my dialect, and the way I speak? Do I speak slower than expected? Do I have any challenges with my speech? Similar to web design in the 1990’s, voice technology today suffers from a lack of appreciation of the diverse nature of humankind, of human capabilities, of human nature.

The linguistic world is bewilderingly diverse, with roughly 7,177 living languages worldwide, according to the Ethnologue. A language is more than a form of speech that groups of people use to communicate with each other. It embodies a connection to the past — a connection to our culture and traditions. Any attempt to decipher a language must therefore go beyond the literal meaning of words — it must go deeper into our communities to understand a deeper meaning. How much do we know? And how much do we truly appreciate?

There is voice driven bias inherent in culture, in gender, even in dialect. Most voice applications are trained on fewer than a dozen languages, so it is hard not to imagine that the majority of voices are often left behind. For example, 30% of the world’s languages are African, yet none of the main players in the global voice assistants market — Apple’s Siri, Google’s Home, nor Amazon’s Alexa — support a single native African language.

“Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We all experience life — and are exposed to different opportunities, through gender, age, ethnicity, ability, social class, sexuality, religion, education, and zip codes. We must use that knowledge and experience to reframe the world with a different lens — one that seeks to include, rather than exclude. If our lives are not homogeneous, why should voice applications be any different?

There are now over 100,000 skills on Alexa alone, yet the ability to search for the right application is like looking for a needle in the haystack. What is the point of having access to so many applications or skills if we can not discover something that can be even remotely helpful? For every application to connect old to young, teach our children new facts during a time of pandemic, or help our mind track signs of dementia, there are thousands devoted to tracking the weather, or telling us often overlapping information.

While voice technology holds the promise of inclusivity — we still have ways to go before it can achieve its potential of bridging physical and cultural divides. But the challenge is not one of technology, but rather, a reflection of the systemic inequality in our society, which undermines our ability to create long lasting social impact.

As reflected by the current health crisis, power is not equally distributed in the world; those having less tend to have been hit the hardest — more diverse communities, women, older and more contingent workers — were those struggling even before all this madness began. The power of the pandemic is in the exposure of what was before it all began — that embedded inequality existed in our world before, and the structure of power and control has been far from equal. Why would we be surprised if voice technology was any different? Power is in the hands of the developer, but who chooses those that convert the 1s and 0s into something more meaningful and purposeful?

Neither is power equally distributed in the development of data science. With datasets being largely homogeneous, it should come as no surprise then, that the virtual assistants currently in the market still have significant gender and race bias.  Too often, we build for what we see, and too often, we don’t see beyond ourselves.

We have more power at our fingertips than ever before. With power comes responsibilities; as designers and technologists, we have a crucial role to play to ensure technology is being leveraged ethically and responsibly, and for the good of humanity.

While technology does not — or should not — care about the color of our skin, our gender, or our age, in reality, it does. From the naming convention of virtual assistants and the perceived gender of the artificial voice, to its ability (or inability) to detect accents and dialects, we are only beginning to understand – and undo – the human biases that our systems and solutions have inherited. None of us are born biased. And neither is our technology – it does not , or should not, care about how old we are, what gender or ethnicity we belong to, or where we were born.

Our upbringing and our life experiences shape our view — of how the world is, and how it should be. That in turn, shape the solutions that we create and the challenges we choose to tackle. With emerging technologies such as voice and artificial intelligence, we have the opportunity to re-shape our future and create a more equitable society for all. We can all be active participants in writing the next chapter of humanity that reflect our values and priorities — for a world that is as diverse and vibrant as ever.

And it’s our collective responsibility to ensure that every voice is heard.

In this new episode of One Vision, Theo and Bradley of Unconventional Ventures chat with Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek, Head of Conversational Research at VERSA, CEO and Founder of Women in Voice, about the promises of voice technology, and her passion in democratizing access to voice technology across ecosystems and languages. Join us and listen to an amazing episode with Joan on iTunes, Spotify, and all players.

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