The AI startup erasing call center worker accents: is it fighting bias – or perpetuating it?

A Silicon Valley startup offers voice-altering tech to call center workers around the world: Yes, this is wrong ... but a lot of things exist in the world'

Hi, good morning. I'm calling in from Bangalore, India." I'm talking on speakerphone to a man with an obvious Indian accent. He pauses. Now I have enabled the accent translation," he says. It's the same person, but he sounds completely different: loud and slightly nasal, impossible to distinguish from the accents of my friends in Brooklyn.

Only after he had spoken a few more sentences did I notice a hint of the software changing his voice: it rendered the word technology" with an unnatural cadence and stress on the wrong syllable. Still, it was hard not to be impressed - and disturbed.