Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jboy 3642 days ago
I think it would be amazing if they could combine this voice-modulation technology with a facial motion capture technology (like in Avatar) to display artificial/shifting faces as well as voices. You could effectively create a computer screen-based version of the "scramble suit" used in A Scanner Darkly! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/mediaviewer/rm1872861440

I think a combined face+voice system would be even more useful in interviews (since a significant amount of human communication is expressed through facial cues). It would also add another dimension to your proposed voice-modulation gender-blinding experiment.
2 comments
cortesoft 3642 days ago
Wouldn't that just increase the problem that the person you are responding to brought up? If you capture their facial movements, it might be even easier to tell if they are a man or a woman, despite any scrambling you do.
link
xiaoma 3642 days ago
Yes. If the goal is gender blindness, a more effective strategy is to block all video and voice communication. Even chat could be a giveaway. Go off of nothing but code against a test suite.
link
cortesoft 3642 days ago
That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Coding skills that can be measured in this way are a small part of what it means to be a good employee.

I feel like this is kinda like choosing who to draft in the NBA solely on free throw percentage.

link
jboy 3642 days ago
Quite possibly! That's the extra dimension added to the experiment. :)

It would be even more fascinating if you could cluster facial expressions or motions as "more female" or "more male". And for bonus points, work out a way to "filter" or "smooth" the facial signal to reduce/remove these giveaway hints (or insert false hints).

link
cauterized 3642 days ago
IIRC studies have indicated that (be it for genetic or cultural reasons), women tend to be more facially expressive than men.
link