NTSB pulls docket after AI recreates dead pilots' voices

hckrnws

NTSB pulls docket after AI recreates dead pilots' voices

(arstechnica.com)

by Lihh27

fn-mote
61d
Grisly, but I’m against restrictions on releasing what should be public information. Even if they came from the 1990s.
These knee-jerk reactions, creating special case rules, really seem like a negative to me.
Just wait for a ban on posting dash cam or police body cam recordings.
1. wrs
  01d
  Before you advocate changing an extremely successful safety culture because you want to apply abstract principles, you might want to do some Chesterton's Fence thinking. Aviation safety depends on fearless analysis of objective data and blameless reporting, which is a very unnatural and sometimes counterintuitive framework for humans to operate in.
  The NTSB releases transcripts of cockpit voice recordings, just not the literal voices. This is a human consideration that doesn't affect the quality or transparency of the analysis.
2. dlcarrier
  01d
  The NTSB's publishing of the transcript but not the recording is a pretty standard means for providing full privacy while increasing safety. A recording allows an incident analysis which is extremely useful in updating safety procedures to prevent incidents and plan for the ones that do occur. Publishing the raw sound recording reduces privacy with no increase in safety, but publishing an analysis of the recordings does not harm privacy, while getting the entire safety benefit.
  This is different than a privacy vs liability conflict, where a recording isn't going to provide a safety benefit, it'll just move liability around, where there's far more controversy over publishing any analysis of the recording, or even creating one in the first place.
  The NTSB should never have published the unredacted spectrograph, as it is effectively a raw sound recording.
3. sokoloff
  31d
  On what basis should the recording of voices of identifiable flight crew (often the last words of people soon-to-perish, perhaps unknowingly) be public information?
  You seem fairly sure that the public has a right to hear them and that view is not universal and I'm not even sure is a majority view.
  1. halJordan
    21d
    The basis is that it's public domain data. And the public a) owns it and b) has property rights that are assertable without cause.
    A long time ago (before the infantilization of the American public) this was the default, majority rule. And it's still reflected as the default position in the US Code.
gnabgib
01d
Not the title? US scrambles to stop Internet users re-creating dead pilots’ voices
Maybe Ars changed.. this one make no sense (they didn't pull a docket, they closed the whole docket system) https://www.ntsb.gov/pages/dockets-unavailable.aspx
okeuro49
41d
Why did they need the spectrogram?
1. petercooper
  01d
  I'm only an ardent viewer of crash investigation stuff, not a pro, but it seems to be a good way to show specifics of warning noises, engine sounds, unusual cabin noises (if relevant) and sometimes even structural failures happening over time in a more direct way from the cockpit voice recorder without sharing the actual "audio".
mcoliver
01d
Glad to see financial institutions use voice authentication. Absolutely nothing could go wrong with that.
madaxe_again
21d
Next year: Congress bans the Fourier transform.
1. dmboyd
  11d
  Don’t joke about that, you’ll give them ideas. particularly as Fourier is credited with discovering the greenhouse effect.
superkuh
41d
Like Scott Manley says, going from a frequency domain image representation to a time domain sound file is something that is extremely old and does not and has not required AI the last 50 years. It's just that they vibe coded the extremely old, extremely normal algorithmic solution. AI did not recreate the dead pilots voice, it just made data preparation and coding a bit less work.
It's almost certain you've used software or seen/heard software output today that transformed between frequency domain and time domain. It's ubiquitous.
1. 15155
  01d
RevEng
01d
A spectrogram is literally the same audio, just transformed through a Fourier transform. That transform has a trivial inverse. The spectrogram isn't perfect - the visual representation is low resolution and the phase information is missing - but it's plenty enough to at least figure out what was said. There's nothing surprising that this is possible, only disappointing that whoever published the article didn't realize it.
maxlin
31d
Not everything is AI, they provided the spectogram. Even a trained eye can read one, especially if context is provided.
1. Jtsummers
  01d
  > Even a trained eye can read one, especially if context is provided.
  I'd hope a trained eye could read one, that's the point of the training.