alt Hacker NewsAll of the major hearing aid manufacturers incorporate DNNs or transformers into their chipsets. The manufacturers advertise it as "AI" and that's probably a fair description.
It's a kind of filter, implemented with neural networks, sound-to-sound translation. For example Oticon's white paper on their AI based noise reduction system is here https://assets-je.cas.dgs.com/-/media/oticon/main/pdf/austra...
> > Our goal was to train the DNN on sound scenes so that it could solve the task of balancing sound sources by preserving cues and attenuating noise. The large amount of data needed for this training was recorded in different sound scenes across a wide array of listening environments representing sound scenes that listeners would typically be exposed to in their everyday lives. We used a specialised spherical microphone, capable of capturing 360 degrees of sounds to provide the DNN with a spatially accurate and detailed sound scene and to train it on the full sound scene.
They claim it improves signal to noise over traditional DSP hearing aids.
There's a pretty wide difference between what we call AI and what salespeople call AI. Technically, a linear regression can be modelled as a single node neural network, which makes it AI.
It'd be pretty typical of sales to try to make hearing aids sound like they're actually capable of thought comparable to people. AI is machines that can produce results approaching thought, and I don't believe these hearing aids are going to be replacing any brains any time soon. Claude, on the other hand... It's already replaced a large chunk of people at their jobs.