Google Pixel Buds Tap AI To Alert Users To Sirens, Crying Babies, and Barking Dogs (venturebeat.com) 35
Google Pixel Buds can now alert you to the sounds of a crying baby, barking dog, or the siren of an emergency vehicle when you're listening to something and may not otherwise hear the sound. From a report: The feature reduces the volume of whatever music or podcast you're listening to and plays a chime sound to signal an alert. Attention Alerts is part of an AI-powered experimental feature being added to Google's flagship earbuds today in a larger firmware update. Google trained AI systems to recognize the trio of sounds by scraping audio from publicly available videos, a company spokesperson told VentureBeat. Amazon's Echo speakers have the ability to detect sounds that may be important in a home setting, like alarms, breaking glass, or sounds indicating someone is in your home when you're away.
I see a lot of people driving with earbuds (Score:2)
While hearing isn't your primary sense that you need while driving and people who are deaf can get drivers licenses. One should not be using headphones or earbuds while driving. A horn, siren of an emergency vehicle, or just hearing the engine and road noise of a car that happens to be in your blind spot is very important had saved me from getting into an accident multiple times.
We take driving often much more lax, than we should. We are in a piece of metal that is normally about 1 ton, hurling at speeds a
Airpods don't block outside sound (Score:1)
Airpods don't have the rubber ear seal that most earbuds do. They don't block outside sound at all.
The best part is that this also means they sit in your ears better than any earphones I've owned since those plastic ear seals became standard. Airpods pro do have that normal earphone plastic seal and alot of people report trouble with the way they fit in their ear.
Airpods are great for taking calls on your phone (including android) or laptop. I actually bought them mostly to sound better on work calls.
In oth
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>"Wearing headphones while driving is illegal in most states. Sadly, that doesn't stop many from doing it."
The truly sad part is that wearing headphones is potentially no more dangerous or different than blasting your car stereo at deafening levels, which seems to be far more common. You can use headphones responsibly or irresponsibly, just like... well, just about anything else.
It is supposedly "illegal" in many states to wear earplugs, yet this is extremely common for motorcycle riders to prevent ear
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EWW as fuck, you all missed it, fucking Google listening in to every fucking thing going on around you, whilst you listen to music. You a walking wiretap into everyone around you, blithely listening to music whilst you expose anyone near you to gross invasion of privacy. Like what the FUCK, how can you people be so fucking blind, google glass spying on you, now google phones listening in on every one, all of the time, ohh ahh, it's a feature, yeah a gullible moron feature.
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A horn, siren of an emergency vehicle, or just hearing the engine and road noise of a car that happens to be in your blind spot is very important had saved me from getting into an accident multiple times.
The same applies to having a car radio on, not driving supped up hot rod, not being near a Harley, and not driving your car close to the redline. The last point of which is why I drive with noise cancelling headphones. It actually makes it far easier to hear a potential horn than driving with the engine screaming at 200km/h and having the radio on.
Incidentally I get warning about oncoming sirens long before I can see or hear them (usually 1km out).
Hence transparency mode (Score:1)
One should not be using headphones or earbuds while driving.
More advanced buds now are offering transparency mode, where they basically repeat outside sounds - the Google ones I think are an example of that? though maybe just silencing what they are playing.
AirPods Pro do have a transparency mode where they are re-playing external sounds so you can hear them clearly, and as another poster mentioned you can hear through normal AirPods...
I totally agree with you that it's important when driven to be able to
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I see this as more of an indictment against the infotainment systems in modern cars being either too obtuse or broken that people would choose to use earbuds than the audio system built into the vehicle. Now some people are just dumb and/or lazy but I can imagine many people being frustrated with Bluetooth not syncing, jittery audio or a host of issues that can crop up with it, or the terrible GUI on many cars, and while there's certainly acceptable concerns and criticism against majority-touch interfaces
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I don't think that is really the case.
In the 1980's we had kids with huge boom boxes walking down the street blasting music for all to hear, and offer suffer.
The 2020's music is a private thing. We have grown use to listing to whatever music we like, with headphones. It probably just doesn't occur to people to take their headphones off and use the much higher quality speaker system in their automobiles. Mainly because other people will know their music preferences.
If you can navigate your phone, the cars
Re: I see a lot of people driving with earbuds (Score:2)
Why would the driver be wearing earbuds? The driver gets to pick what's on the radio, fuck everyone else in the car they can wear earbuds.
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Ban car radios too?
If this technology was perfected out be pretty useful. Tune out all irrelevant sound, reduce cognitive load.
Let's be clear about the implications here. (Score:3)
"Google Pixel Buds Tap AI To Alert Users To Sirens, Crying Babies, and Barking Dogs " ...and can be configured to alert Google staff to moaning women, anyone saying "password is..." and a host of other audio cues that something interesting and private is happening obliviously close to Google recording devices.
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Definitely makes my list of things I do not want, and will not buy.
Bad (Score:2)
Encouraging reliance on digital devices for fundamental human cognitive tasks is great for the bottom line, but catastrophic for humanity.
Hello trash can (Score:2)
The first time my buds alert me to someones crying crotch fruit will be the point I throw my buds away. I wear buds to escape the world I'm currently in, such as on flights or in the grocery store.Google has been on a roll recently with introducing changes nobody wants. Just earlier this week Google decided it would lock out the choice of camera applications in the next build of Android.
This misses the point (Score:2)
The entire idea of wearing ear buds is to NOT hear all the noise going on around you. This way it gives people an out when their kid drowns in the tub. "I didn't hear them, I had my ear buds in."
This is similar to when people let their kids in a hot car to roast and claim they were so preoccupied with everything else they forgot the kid was in the back seat. "I had too much on my mind."
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Dude, really?
People make mistakes, parents are no exception. Though I never did it myself, I can fully understand how easy it is to get distracted and do something stupid like leaving your kid asleep in the backseat of your car on a hot day, or stepping away while they are in the tub. Stuff happens, bad stuff results, nobody is perfect. I made my share of scary mistakes with my children, missed grabbing them as they ran by towards the street in front of the passing car, letting go of the bicycle too soo
Interesting technology... (Score:2)
I haven't read the article. Would anyone be able to advise if the product will also be able to alert the user to a "crying baby, barking dog, or the siren of an emergency vehicle" when you are not listening to something? Would you still need to have the ear-buds in?
Unnecessary (Score:2)
There isn't a set of ear buds/plugs made that could block the skull piercing sound of my three husky mixes barking.
- Necron69
Huh? (Score:2)
sounds indicating someone is in your home when you're away
How do they do that? If they are in my ears, when I'm away so are they. If I leave them at home to monitor, how do they alert me?
Shouldn't this be a function of the device that they are connecting to? Sync them to my car's audio system and the audio system listens for sirens. Sync them to the home audio system and they listen for the baby crying, doorbell, etc.
And if something is listening to my house when I'm away, can I get it to sent me a message when the bed springs start squeaking?
opposite of what many want (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people wear ear buds to NOT hear crying babies, especially when on a flight.
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Exactly. I hope you can configure what sounds it alerts you to. If I'm on public transit, the crying baby is the problem of the person with the baby, not mine.
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I don't want to hear that shit (Score:1)
That's why I wear earbuds. I'd better be able to disable those alerts
Hear my puke (Score:2)
You need to be able to select which noises (Score:2)
I still remember as a young inexperienced driver with my stereo blasting trying to get on the freeway and having an ambulance pass me on the shoulder. I didn't even hear it until it passed and it startled me. It rattled me enough that the experience still sticks in my mind.
I should have been the one on the shoulder yielding for the ambulance. Instead I was the oblivious driver blocking its path. I wasn't the only driver who failed to yield, but that's not a good excuse.
Filtering out crying babies thoug
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Think of the children + microphone permissions (Score:2)
If I am paying $180 for headphones (Score:3)
I don't want a random sound when the RNG that is AI decides.