Hearing Aids & Artificial Intelligence

Hearing technology has advanced in leaps and bounds, and it’s hard to keep up with all the amazing new programs and features. They become more sophisticated each year, capable of sensing your environment and changing between programs and setting without you having to lift a finger. The newest direction in cutting edge hearing technology is in the world of artificial intelligence and we can’t wait for this to become part of all our favorite hearing devices.

Hearing Aids and Artificial Intelligence

When you hear the term artificial intelligence (AI) you might think about the latest sci-fi film you watched, where robots take over the world. When it comes to consumer technology, AI is nothing like what you may be imagining. Researchers who are working with AI and hearing technology are developing machine learning programs to help you hear better. Machine learning is a program that can be trained, and can learn new things using data and complex algorithms to predict patterns. AI and hearing technology would allow you hearing aids to be smart devices that could learn your hearing preferences and what programs help you hear. They could sense the listening environment and automatically switch between programs and adjust settings to help you have the best hearing.

How Hearing Technology Uses Artificial Intelligence

Hearing aids are complex devices, and many of the latest hearing aids on the market can connect to your smartphone using Bluetooth technology. This is like hooking your hearing aid up to a computer, and it’s not a big step to introduce AI technology into this connection. Some hearing aids already use AI tech, sensing the environment around you, and automatically adjusting your devices to help you hear. For example, your hearing aids could ask you questions about your listening preferences via your smartphone app, and use this information to choose the settings to help you hear. Once you’ve trained your devices to understand your listening preferences, they’ll change automatically, and will do a better job of calibrating the settings than you can.

Next Steps to Incorporating Artificial Intelligence with Hearing Aids

AI technology isn’t being widely used in hearing technology. There are only one or two hearing devices that are starting to use machine learning to help you hear, but since AI has found its way into hearing technology, it’s only a matter of time before these programs become vital to hearing aid technology. AI could be especially useful when it comes to discriminating between important speech sounds and annoying background sounds that makes it challenging to focus on what you want to hear. AI technology could make this problem disappear, with programs that could isolate speech sounds, and make it easy to hear the voice you’re listening to rather than the voice of someone talking loudly at the table behind you. Another example of smart hearing aids is being developed by Starkey. They’re working on a hearing aid platform that could make hearing aids the ultimate health monitoring devices. Just like your smart watch that tells you about your heart rate, pulse, or breathing rate, your hearing aids could monitor all these health patterns, and send that data to your smartphone. They could also notify you if something is wrong, or even send a message to a designated family member if you’re in trouble. If you live alone and have been worried that your independence could be putting your health at risk, a hearing aid with AI technology could give you peace of mind. Researchers are hoping they can develop technology that would allow your hearing devices to monitor your body temperature, as well as your blood sugar levels, so if you’re running a fever, or struggle to stay on top of your diabetes, your hearing aids could help keep you healthy.

Orange County Physicians’ Hearing Services

Excited about the future of hearing aids? So are we! Visit us today at Orange County Physicians’ Hearing Services to learn about the latest hearing technology that is making it easier to hear. From hearing aids that reduce background sounds and help you focus on important speech to those that make it easier to catch every punchline and share special moments with your loved ones, we have the hearing aids that will change your life.