Hearing Aids and Artificial Intelligence
There are many ways that hearing aids can help make life easier. Aside from helping us to hear better, hearing aids facilitate better relationships to friends and family, improve your physical well-being, and slow cognitive decline. They can also help you feel less tired or exhausted and improve job performance.
Technological advancements have come a long way in recent years and hearing aids are also reaping the benefits. One of the latest advancements is Artificial Intelligence, or AI. AI describes a field of computer science in which programs are created to apply multi-dimensional, intelligent solutions to complex problems that would otherwise require human intelligence. Common applications include visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and language translation. In essence, AI is often used to process large amounts of information and, by either following or deducing rules, determine an appropriate response to this input.
So How Can AI Help the Function of Hearings Aids?
AI helps to maximize the capabilities of the digital technologies on which hearing aid platforms are based. Patients can enjoy new hearing benefits with this integration of technology—i.e., better hearing!
In a given space, there is often environmental noise that your ears and brain notice, name, and try to balance. A person with normal hearing may be able to distinguish between sirens in the distance, someone on a phone call nearby, and still focus on a waiter at a café. For someone with hearing aids, it can be a bit more difficult. Depending on how the device was fitted, their hearing may only be focused on the sounds closest to them or they may have difficulty hearing high-pitched sounds.
Real world communication situations are more complex still, and up to very recently “prediction-only” approaches to signal processing have been dominant relating to noise management in hearing aids. The approaches are based on a measure of the input signal, to which an assumption was made, an algorithm was engaged, and a prediction was made. It is widely held that this has been a reasonable approach and has worked well in many areas, but there are many communication situations wherein uni-dimensional predictions cannot account for the complexity of the environment.
Some propose that a better technique is to confirm that the signal processing that is applied achieves the desired outcome. This “confirmation approach” performs a sophisticated analysis of the communication situation and the environmental sound, and adjusts its performance based on whether specific performance goals are met or not, providing a greater likelihood of meeting the needs of the user.
More Than Just A Hearing Aid
Even though AI can make hearing aids perform its base task better for you, the features do not stop there. For example, the Starkey Livio AI hearing aid has a feature called Hearing Reality™ that is the ears version of virtual reality that “uses high-speed, high-definition computer processing to manage, separate and help us focus these many layers of sound to better replicate natural hearing. The result is immersive, authentic hearing, where quiet sounds are quiet, noise can be “ignored,” and you’re able to focus on the sounds (or signals of interest) that matter and that you want to hear.” (Starkey Hearing, 2018)
It is the first hearing aid with sensors and artificial intelligence that uses an accelerometer and gyroscope to track physical activity as well. “Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), Livio AI hearing aids can learn and perform tasks that no other hearing aids can, including letting you turn streaming on and off by simply tapping your ear instead of your hearing aid, translating languages, and tracking and measuring body and brain health.” (Starkey Hearing, 2018)
The Future of AI and Hearing Aids
Artificial Intelligence is a technology that is expanding to all areas of life: smartphones, televisions, computers and laptops, and now hearing aids. One main purpose of AI is to apply multi-dimensional, intelligent solutions to complex problems that would otherwise require human intelligence. With hearing aid technology, AI aims to provide solutions to the one of the most prevalent, complex medical conditions affecting humans: disabling hearing loss.
As manufacturers integrate various AI technologies into their products, they will learn which features people living with hearing loss are most interested in. Consult with a hearing healthcare professional to ask about which of these new technologies can best benefit you.
