Did you know that law enforcement agencies lose billions of dollars per every year because of hoax calls?
Hoax calls can be obvious jokes, but they can also be bomb threats. In other words, because of the potential seriousness of these calls, it’s not a good idea to ignore even the obvious ones. But this often means wasting valuable resources, or taking away resources from real emergencies.
So the problem lies in not knowing whether a potential hoax is legitimate or not. How would agencies know this? By identifying an anonymous caller – or, in other words, by using speech recognition algorithms.
Speech recognition algorithms can now extract almost impossible amounts of detail from anonymous callers – from a person’s gender, age, weight, and height, to their emotional state and possible drug taking. And believe it or not, some algorithms can even reveal possible facial structure of callers and details about their environment, such as the material of the walls and ceiling.
As Rita Singh, a speech scientists, explains, voice can reveal extraordinary amount of detail about a person. This is because, even though people may try to disguise their voice, some aspects can not be changed because they’re not under the person’s voluntary control.
Source: Digital Trends (http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/vocal-algorithm-profiling/)
The Wonderful World of Algorithms 