MIT Technology Review November 9, 2023
A neural network can recognize and filter out certain sounds, changing the way we choose to experience the world around us.
Future noise-canceling headphones could let users opt back in to certain sounds they’d like to hear, such as babies crying, birds tweeting, or alarms ringing.
The technology that makes it possible, called semantic hearing, could pave the way for smarter hearing aids and earphones, allowing the wearer to filter out some sounds while boosting others.
The system, which is still in prototype, works by connecting off-the-shelf noise-canceling headphones to a smartphone app. The microphones embedded in these headphones, which are used to cancel out noise, are repurposed to also detect the sounds in the world around the wearer....
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