Skip to main content

Redundant Technology

This particular use case for AI far exceeds the usual level of pointlessness as things go. In many parts of the world finding food to survive is still a big deal so snacking is not even a concept. Surviving the day takes so much mental and physical effort that the person has no capacity to game even if in theory they could. The next level of uselessness is the chip-crunch silencer so the gamer is not annoyed. 

To design its “crunch cancellation” technology, Doritos partnered with Brooklyn, New York-based interactive design studio Smooth Technology, which developed the software over six months. The development team used artificial intelligence and machine learning to train its software to recognize the precise sounds involved in a Doritos crunch, analyzing more than 5,000 different crunch sounds along the way. Once the software singles out and recognizes a crunch sound, it filters it out before it is transmitted through your microphone, in effect canceling the crunch and allowing you to silently enjoy your snack.

But all games are not made equal - there are those that aim to solve real world problems. 

.. EarthGamesUW offers students from diverse disciplines—computer science to English, information sciences to education—the opportunity to produce real products and practice professional skills, all while having an impact on climate change.

In the same vein, maybe the crunch-silencer application can go a different more socially useful direction in the future, become a selective noise cancellation solution. There are homes where a child cannot fall asleep because the adults are in a loud, heated argument - there is value in canceling that noise out so the kid sleeps in peace, has less stress and anxiety in their life - wakes up ready to learn at school, create a path out of the turbulence at home. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...
25 comments
Read more