Voice Recognition Still Has Significant Race and Gender Biases
Bajorek, 2019: Harvard Business Review
Summary. As with facial recognition, web searches, and even soap dispensers, speech recognition is another form of AI that performs worse for women and non-white people. And speech recognition now influences important aspects of people’s lives, including immigration decisions, job hiring, and transportation, among many other things. That means that speech recognition accuracy — or lack thereof — could prevent you from immigrating to a new country, getting a job, or traveling safely. This is absolutely a matter of social injustice.
But if that alone doesn’t convince companies to fix the problem, they should consider that the accuracy of speech recognition also affects customer purchasing decisions. Remember that women and minorities have huge purchasing power — why wouldn’t companies want to solve this problem? It’s a missed business opportunity. And it’s something we all need to keep talking about. Because these biases have serious consequences in people’s live, and because everyone deserves to have their voice heard.