Digital Assistants May Be Able To Automatically Detect When Someone Is Having a Heart Attack, Study Finds 31
Zorro shares a report from The Register: Smart speakers are always listening for wake words, and recording everything they hear to improve their neural networks and target their masters with marketing. It's, frankly, creepy. Academics at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, however, believe there are benefits to installing a cyber-assistant at home that listens in all the time. "A lot of people have smart speakers in their homes, and these devices have amazing capabilities that we can take advantage of," said Shyam Gollakota, coauthor of the research published this week in npj Digital Medicine. "We envision a contactless system that works by continuously and passively monitoring the bedroom for an agonal breathing event, and alerts anyone nearby to come provide CPR. And then if there's no response, the device can automatically call 911." "When the researchers tested their system on samples from the positive dataset, the devices correctly identified the noises associated with heart attacks about 96 percent of the time when they were placed six meters away from the source of the sound," the report adds. "But there's a catch: it only really works when the researchers apply a noise cancellation algorithm to drown out background noise. The percentage for identifying heart attacks rapidly drops to just below five per cent if a noise cancellation algorithm isn't applied."
"Hey Siri, Call an ambulance" (Score:4, Funny)
"Alexa, can you tell the difference between ..." (Score:2)
". . . an orgasm and a heart attack . . . ?
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". . . an orgasm and a heart attack . . . ?
Alexa: Yes. With one, people usually say "Oh God!" and the other "Hi God."
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add to the pre existing list.
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"This is the NSA's plan to have a listening device in every home. "it can detect if your having a heart attack" yeah... yeah thats it"
The question is, can they kill somebody with a special sound?
Or do they have to wait for a Mexican standoff and play gunshot sounds?
You're right, and that's what money is (Score:2)
> It's not just a matter of money because there will always be a limited amount of ambulances available, meaning a false alarm for an ambulance will always have the risk of somebody with a real emergency being put in a queue instead of picked up right away.
Money is how we measure limited resources. More ambulance crews are interchangeable with dollars - we could buy more ambulance crews. Which would mean that money (resources) wouldn't be available for education or road safety or food or whatever.
Your
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Offer to ambulance crews three times as much and you'll very quickly have paramedics move to your city. You'll alao have nurses and others get into the ambulance side as quickly as they can. Yes, money can get you ambulance crews.
Also, we spend millions of dollars every year re-planting forests. You could also buy full grown trees from elsewhere and put them exactly where the old trees were, if you wanted to.
Money isn't "sometimes a solution" to limited valuable resources such as workers, wood, etc - it i
Hype and novelty (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a terribly indirect method of detecting a heart attack. Agonal respiration is the body's last ditch effort to stay alive. It's basically the brain stem kicking in and trying to force breathing. They are several seconds apart and sound a lot like a big sudden sigh, but often with a rattling or snoring. I'm very curious how they expect to differentiate between agonal respiration and sleep apnea, because they result in the same kind of sudden deep breath followed by several seconds without breathing.
You'd be far, far better off having a fitbit, apple watch, etc looking for changes in pulse rate and strength than hoping to catch the sound of someone's last gasps as they die.
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You'd be far, far better off having a fitbit, apple watch, etc looking for changes in pulse rate and strength than hoping to catch the sound of someone's last gasps as they die.
Also explain better to people what it feels like to get a heart attack.
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I'm very curious how they expect to differentiate between agonal respiration and sleep apnea, because they result in the same kind of sudden deep breath followed by several seconds without breathing.
Aside from it being technically interesting, in the real world, who cares? Either way you may die without medical attention.
Priorities (Score:2)
alerts anyone nearby to come provide CPR
First, clear my browser history.
"This is for YOUR PROTECTION, citizen!" (Score:2)
"..Oh, sorry citizen, your smart speaker detected what it thought was a heart attack. No worries, may the paramedics check you out quickly while we're here? It's just for your protection. Mind if we have a quick look around while we're here? It's for your protection, citizen. Oh hey nice DVD collection." (body cam takes a picture) "Wow you like to read don't you?" *body cam records all the books on your shelves* "This is a nice place you have here, Citizen" *body cam sweeps the room takin