Joseph Turow is Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania’s Anneberg School for Communication. In this book, he reminds us how easy it is to think narrowly and how important it is
to constantly expand our gaze.
We are probably all well used to talking about data in the form of databases and spreadsheets. This book opens our eyes to the reality that data is no longer something about us, it is us.
The book opens with “Your voice is unique. No one else has it. And because your voice belongs to no one else, it’s extraordinarily valuable, not only to you, but also to a new sector of society that is
designed to exploit it: the voice intelligence industry.” This book is the first in-depth exploration of this new business sector and shows us how artificial intelligence is enabling personalised marketing and discrimination through voice analysis.
With so many of us sharing our homes with smart speakers, we all need to be aware of the fact that they are increasingly extracting and using voice prints which can be used not only to identify us but
also to infer personal characteristics and traits. I certainly had no idea, before reading this book, that customer service centres are already analysing – often in real time - the voices of callers to assess
their emotions, sentiments, and personality.
As is so often the case with technology, there is a danger that we are not aware of developments: developments designed to exploit us, but because of their increasingly opaque nature, we accept
them without properly understanding or engaging with them. In presenting us with a well-researched and accessible book, Turow concludes by saying that turning our attention to ensuring new technologies like this have protections built in must be a priority. Attempts at injecting ethics into technologies post-development rarely succeed and damage done is hard to un-do. Turow urges us to act now, and he is right. However, I also hope that, in the future, we can move to an environment where protections, governance and an open, ethical and non-exploitative approach can be built in to technology from day one, rather than being an after-thought. That would be real progress.
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Indulge