What if smartphone sound-recognition could be tweaked to do core IT and operational chores? This would be an option to customize the phone to listen for sounds specific to your company. Credit: siphotography / Getty Images I was working on a file the other day when my iPhone popped up a message: “A sound has been recognized that may be a doorbell.” Indeed, a doorbell had just rung. This is one of the new collection of accessibility notifications for those who have trouble hearing. Apple has been rolling out a lot of these lately, and Google’s Android has been doing the same. In fact, the iPhone has quite a few sounds it is trained to listen for: fire alarms, sirens, smoke alarms, cats and dogs, appliances (though I‘m not clear about exactly which appliances), car horns, doorbells, door knocks, glass breaking, kettles, water running, baby crying, coughing and shouting. It also has to deactivate “Hey, Siri” voice commands if it’s listening for other sounds. It’s not clear why that’s the case; if the phone’s already listening, why not just include the “Hey, Siri” command to the list of items to listen for? But what if this sound-recognition could be tweaked to do core IT and operational chores? Think of it as an option to customize the phone to listen for sounds specific to your company. Just like the classic machine learning example, could the phone hear a sound in a work area and say, “That sounds like the XYZ component in that huge piece of machinery is overheating.” Or perhaps the feature could be something even more useful, such as detecting when a specific person is coming down the hall. “Alert! Ken from Legal is approaching. Hide now.” Or perhaps you could place the phone by an open window so that it can listen for the sound of your boss’s car arriving? It could also become an evil management tool, alerting someone if no keyboard clicks have been detected for a predetermined period of time. How about a helpful identifier? If caller-ID isn’t germane, could it be programmed with the voices of all users so that it can flag the name of the caller? (An evil version would be identifying employees who phone into an anonymous complaint line.) Take this up a notch and a smartphone could be customized to identify any sounds you want, to help the business. We already know that videoconferencing systems are always listening — even when you have muted your mic — but what if the phone could help identify who’s actually talking? Some systems offer that now, but it’s not universal and it doesn’t even routinely work with systems that claim to have it. Ever run into a fast-talker at work? What if the phone could listen and pipe into your earbud a slow and more clear interpretation? Yes, it could also display a realtime transcript on the screen, but it’s hard to look at that screen constantly and not be noticed. Earbud prompts are more discrete. Then there are always real-time “voice-lying detection” alerts. Imagine having a chat with your supervisor and hearing, “That’s likely a lie.” It could help during board or audience presentations by listening for a high volume of sighs or yawns leading to a cautionary prompt: “Wrap it up. You’re losing them.” Granted, a good speaker should know that, but if the speaker is focused on some complicated material, he or she may not pick up on the audience getting distracted. As Apple, Google and others work to perfect accessibility features that are genuinely useful and helpful, it’s clear so much more can be done with these devices. Related content opinion A phish by any other name should still not be clicked By Evan Schuman Apr 05, 2024 6 mins Technology Industry Communications Security Industry opinion McDonald's serves up a master class in how not to explain a system outage When McDonald's in March suffered a global outage preventing it from accepting payments, it issued a lengthy statement about the incident that was vague, misleading and yet still allowed many of the technical details to be figured out. By Evan Schuman Apr 01, 2024 7 mins Mobile Payment Data Center Industry opinion Why are CIOs who anticipate the future rarely allowed to do anything about it? Wall Street’s obsession with quarterly earnings has made it extraordinarily difficult for most enterprises to spend on long-term investments, or even mid-term investments. By Evan Schuman Mar 08, 2024 5 mins IT Director IT Strategy IT Leadership opinion The food delivery driver identification dilemma Ever use one of those mobile food delivery apps — only to realize your delivery person isn't who you expected? There's a lesson here about identity, authentication, and what happens when the best laid tech plan meets human beings. By Evan Schuman Mar 01, 2024 6 mins Small and Medium Business Mobile Apps Mobile Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe