shariqm

Those are pretty cool screen reader add-ons. Do you use JAWS, NVDA, or something else?

AudioFocus | Oakland, CA | Hardware Design Co-Founder | Full-time

AudioFocus (YC S19) makes hearing aids that work in noisy places like bars. We use a combination of an in-house built auralization framework and deep learning models to accomplish this. Our prototype runs on the iPhone and we're looking for someone to built a hardware prototype and take it all the way to mass manufactured scale.

You have experience in:

- Low Power Architecture Design

- Wireless Audio Transmission (NFMi, 900Mhz, 2.4Ghz)

- Validation & Mass Manufacturing

and are a lifelong learner, have interest in ML processors, and have worked at Apple AirPods, a hearing aid company, Bose, Doppler Labs, or something similar.

Founded by me (UC Berkeley, BS-EECS, 2011; UC Berkeley, PhD-ML, 2019). Contact: [email protected]

Thought this paragraph was particularly interesting:

“The notion that any risk assessment instrument can account for bias ignores the racial disparities in current and past policing practices.” There are abundant theoretical and empirical reasons to support this claim, since risk assessments are typically based on data of arrests, convictions, or incarcerations, all of which are poor proxies for individual behaviors or predispositions. The coalition continued, “Ultimately, risk-assessment tools create a feedback-loop of racial profiling, pre-trial detention and conviction. A person’s freedom should not be reduced to an algorithm.” By contrast, the Partnership’s statement focused on “minimum requirements for responsible deployment,” spanning such topics as “validity and data sampling bias, bias in statistical predictions; choice of the appropriate targets for prediction; human-computer interaction questions; user training; policy and governance; transparency and review; reproducibility, process, and recordkeeping; and post-deployment evaluation.”

Seem's like they're addressing superficially irresponsible AI deployment but ignoring some of the deeper, complex, ethical issues raised by technologies like facial recognition.

I agree it's still not going to win the cost-benefit tradeoff in most markets. OTOH - I imagine making your software support more OSs is much more expensive than designing your website to be more accessible, at most $1M/year. If you've got billions in annual revenue that's pennies in the bucket.

In my view, it's about trying to provide more 'equal opportunity' in this world where it's financially feasible. This seems like a case where it is more often that not. Again, for medium+ businesses.

Very cool! I like the idea of a longer period (1-year) to develop your idea, good science takes time.

A big hurdle for doing this is latency, every time you hop from one device to another you're adding at least ~10ms of latency if it's over anything like bluetooth. There might a clever way to do it, it's something I'm thinking about but it's too early to say.

For now it looks like it's going to be a behind-the-ear hearing aid. Maybe in 5-10 years it could fit in your ear canal.

In this demo there is only one microphone on the phone. But we're working on stereo (2) microphones now. That will help make it more reliable, lower latency, and give you spatial awareness (awareness of the direction of sound).

Glad you're excited about it!