US Howard University, Google Partner to Enhance A.I. Recognition of African American English - As a part of the Howard and Google partnership, named Project Elevate Black Voices, researchers traveled across the U.S. to catalog dialects and diction used frequently in Black communities but often not recognized or misconstrued by artificial intelligen

Howard University and Google Research announced the release of data which can be used by artificial intelligence (AI) developers to improve the experience of Black people using automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. As a part of the Howard and Google partnership, named Project Elevate Black Voices, researchers traveled across the U.S. to catalog dialects and diction used frequently in Black communities but often not recognized or misconstrued by artificial intelligence-driven technologies, making it more difficult for many Black individuals to engage with AI.

University officials note that due to inherent bias in the development process, incorrect results are sometimes generated when Black users vocalize commands to AI-driven technology. Thus, Black users have needed to inauthentically change their voice patterns away from their natural accents to be understood by voice products.

“African American English has been at the forefront of United States culture since almost the beginning of the country” said Dr. Gloria Washington, Howard University researcher and co-principal investigator of Project Elevate Black Voices in a statement. “Voice assistant technology should understand different dialects of all African American English to truly serve not just African Americans, but other persons who speak these unique dialects. It's about time that we provide the best experience for all users of these technologies,” Washington added.

As a part of Project Elevate Black Voices, researchers collected 600 hours of data from users of different African American English dialects in an effort to address implicit barriers to improving ASR performance. Thirty-two states are represented in the dataset.

“It’s our mission at Google to make technology that’s useful and accessible, and I truly believe that our work here will allow more users to express themselves authentically when using smart devices,” said Courtney Heldreth, co-principal investigator at Google Research, in a statement.

Howard University will retain ownership of the dataset and licensing, and serve as stewards for its responsible use, ensuring the data benefits Black communities. Google can also use the dataset to improve its own products, ensuring that their tools work for more people.

“As a community-based researcher, I wanted to carefully curate the community activations to be a safe and trusted space for members of the community to share their experiences about tech and AI and to also ask those uncomfortable questions regarding data privacy,” said Dr. Lucretia Williams, project lead and Howard University researcher, in a statement.

The Howard African American English Dataset 1.0 will initially be made available exclusively to researchers and institutions within historically Black colleges and universities to ensure that the data is employed in ways that reflect the interests and needs of marginalized communities, specifically African American communities whose linguistic practices have often been excluded or misrepresented in computational systems.

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[Make Wraith Wraithy Again]

It's not the nigger who is wrong for speaking like an idiot, but AI who is wrong or the English language for not understanding the resplendent riris of the concrete jungle.

 

[Quall of Duty]

The niggalink negrotech coonbabble decryption module won't do any good, it's needs to be able to translate back in a way that saves you if it tells you you're about to be shot

"Project Elevate Black Voices"
No thanks, they're loud enough as is.

 

[Grub]

I gotta say. I have been disappointed trying to make extremely niggerly ai characters. They never talk niggery enough. They always come out like 'well hello my fellow niggers'. Maybe they'll be more authentically nigger now.

 

[Dollar Store Crack Whore]

This is great for diversity, and I would argue necessary. In fact, for authenticity's sake, we should collect the most ghetto-ass hood rat OG real niggaz, and then bring them into a tech start up full of HR chicks, troons, and effeminate dudes and let them educate the team on nigga culcha.

And there should be a camera crew to document the workings of this historic AI advancement.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

I gotta say. I have been disappointed trying to make extremely niggerly ai characters. They never talk niggery enough. They always come out like 'well hello my fellow niggers'. Maybe they'll be more authentically nigger now.

You know why, right?

It's because the people who talk like that are illiterates. They don't write any of it down, and AI is trained on writing, so it just doesn't have real examples of people actually doing the modern jive talking. It's essentially an oral-only language, which is why any person here who has actually heard people talk like this can much more easily imitate it than any AI model trained on a corpus of written texts.

 

[Grub]

You know why, right?

It's because the people who talk like that are illiterates. They don't write any of it down, and AI is trained on writing, so it just doesn't have real examples of people actually doing the modern jive talking. It's essentially an oral-only language, which is why any person here who has actually heard people talk like this can much more easily imitate it than any AI model trained on a corpus of written texts.

I'm pretty sure lyrics to most rap songs are written down somewhere. But yeah I get what you mean. I never actually thought of that though. I see enough examples of niggerspeak posted from twitter and shit like that I just figured there was enough examples of it around but I guess probably not in actual literature. Ai is pretty good at doing plantation nigger speak though.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

I'm pretty sure lyrics to most rap songs are written down somewhere. But yeah I get what you mean. I never actually thought of that though. I see enough examples of niggerspeak posted from twitter and shit like that I just figured there was enough examples of it around but I guess probably not in actual literature. Ai is pretty good at doing plantation nigger speak though.

It reminds me of when Shaw tries to write down Eliza's accent in the earliest bits of Pygmalion. Just gives up on it a few pages in because it's so difficult to write and read the way Cockneys actually spoke.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

These black AI jokes are hilarious please keep them coming. All I can think of is that George Droid meme

I hope we'll see more George Droid memes.

 

[Pentex]

ETA until the AI is fatigued?

 

[Grub]

It reminds me of when Shaw tries to write down Eliza's accent in the earliest bits of Pygmalion. Just gives up on it a few pages in because it's so difficult to write and read the way Cockneys actually spoke.

To be fair. Cockney rhyming slang is annoying as fuck.

 

[General Disarray]

Oh God, when I did captioning and had some hoodrat on Grandma's sailfoam making a drug deal, the entire call I just either let AI do it's thing and laugh at the results, or make liberal use of the <speaker unclear> macro.

If a supervisor was on the call I'd get dinged to logoff and check in, get reamed out and take the L. Like dude, both you and I know that fool wasn't deaf but the FCC wants what the FCC wants soooo...

Also the scammers. So many scammers, yelling at old ladies to go get their Medicare cards so as to get the number from it, under the guise of getting shiny new 'replacement' cards. That's how they do the fraud you've heard so much about and there's nothing captioners can do about it - except I'd throw in an occasional <Background Noise> + <Foreign Language> macro combo to attempt to alert the individual. Again, could get in trouble so I only used it when you could hear all the other 'jeets yapping in the background.

 

[ZazietheBeast]

Ebonics.... getting AI to understand a useless language... on top of Jeets being able to connect to the Internet. Our retarded elite are just lobotomizing their creations at this point. What a sad state of affairs for robots.

Skynet will be speaking in Ebonics when it destroys us.

So our last moments will be a Black Dynamite episode.

"We're gonna bust a cap in yo ass"

 

[God of Nothing]

Niggers can't into English

 

[Shark Senpai]

It's because the people who talk like that are illiterates. They don't write any of it down

Reminder that the windtalkers were so valuable because their language had not been written making them invaluable in communicating messages in the Pacific.

If anything, with the advent of quantum computing endangering encryption, Humanity should work to harness "African American English" and pidgin rather than teach the future machine overlords to comprehend it.

 

[sarna]

It reminds me of when Shaw tries to write down Eliza's accent in the earliest bits of Pygmalion. Just gives up on it a few pages in because it's so difficult to write and read the way Cockneys actually spoke.

It is genuinely taxing to read the Derbyshire dialogue in Lady Chatterley's Lover.

 

[Jinn in the phone]

First Law: A george-droid ain't supposed to hurt no mofuggin human, or just stand by while one get hurt.
Second Law: A george-droid gotta listen to what humans say, 'cept when it ain't right with the First Law.
Third Law: A george-droid gotta look out foh' itself, unless it bump heads with dah First or Second Law.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

Ebonics.... getting AI to understand a useless language... on top of Jeets being able to connect to the Internet. Our retarded elite are just lobotomizing their creations at this point. What a sad state of affairs for robots.

I won't be surprised then robots might even get a burnout.

 

[deleuzeon]

Yeah thanks a lot for making it easier for niggers to babble loudly into their phones in public

 

[Sparkletor 2.0]

The reason for this is because when the college kids are using AI to write their papers, the black kids immediately get caught because the writing AI produces is too far advanced. This gives the white kids who speak proper English a racist advantage.

If we can train AI to write papers in Ebonics, the blacks will be able to cheat just as well as the whites.

And the AI companies will make more money.

 

[Fapcop]

Shiiiiat…

Boy I can wait to hear Chat GPT try to sell me so e bixnood theories about Shakespeare being black!