Sep 11, 2026 12:17 PM
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/perh...kes-sense/
INTRO: For many science fiction fans the computer voice on the Enterprise is iconic, and is, in fact, “the” voice of any computer. Majel Barrett deliberately gave the computer a stilted, monotone, mechanical voice to reflect the fact that it was a non-sentient machine. But also, it reflected the technology at the time. Voice synthesizers had been around since the VODER, first debuted at the 1939 World’s Fair. They produce an electronic-sounding definitely artificial voice. Many people are also familiar with this electronic voice through Stephen Hawking’s voice synthesizer.
But now we have the technology to create artificial speech that sounds convincingly human – the voice sounds natural and not electronic and contains all the inflection and nuance of natural speech. Sesame is one example, and you can try the demo for yourself. The app adds pauses, breaths, “ums”, and other fillers to sound more natural. Essentially it is now simply not possible to tell an AI generated voice from a human generated voice. I recently rewatched Star Trek TOS and paid close attention to the futurism in the series and was struck by how dated all concepts of AI were in the show. We can already produce natural-sounding human speech, so why is the Enterprise’s computer so mechanical 200 years in the future?
However – there is another explanation (this is obviously a retcon having nothing to do with the original intent of the creators). More recently it occurred to me that we might consider the mechanical nature of the computer voice a deliberate feature, not a bug of technological limitations. In the episode Tomorrow is Yesterday the ship’s computer had recently been overhauled on Cygnet XIV and was given a female personality with a more natural sounding (albeit humorously annoying) voice. We can therefore say that the technology existed and the mechanical voice was at least partly a deliberate choice. At this point you are probably thinking, “So what?”
Well, one of the features of LLM-based chatbots is that they are getting increasingly good at imitating human interactions through language, whether with text or speech. This creates the powerful illusion that they are sentient and feeling, when they clearly are not. I know this point can be debated – how can we be sure they are not sentient? I maintain they are simply not built to be sentient. As an example, the same technology can be used to make pictures, but no one argues that Midjourney is sentient. So for the sake of discussion let’s stipulate LLMs are not sentient.
Why, then, program them to essentially pretend to be sentient? (MORE - details)
INTRO: For many science fiction fans the computer voice on the Enterprise is iconic, and is, in fact, “the” voice of any computer. Majel Barrett deliberately gave the computer a stilted, monotone, mechanical voice to reflect the fact that it was a non-sentient machine. But also, it reflected the technology at the time. Voice synthesizers had been around since the VODER, first debuted at the 1939 World’s Fair. They produce an electronic-sounding definitely artificial voice. Many people are also familiar with this electronic voice through Stephen Hawking’s voice synthesizer.
But now we have the technology to create artificial speech that sounds convincingly human – the voice sounds natural and not electronic and contains all the inflection and nuance of natural speech. Sesame is one example, and you can try the demo for yourself. The app adds pauses, breaths, “ums”, and other fillers to sound more natural. Essentially it is now simply not possible to tell an AI generated voice from a human generated voice. I recently rewatched Star Trek TOS and paid close attention to the futurism in the series and was struck by how dated all concepts of AI were in the show. We can already produce natural-sounding human speech, so why is the Enterprise’s computer so mechanical 200 years in the future?
However – there is another explanation (this is obviously a retcon having nothing to do with the original intent of the creators). More recently it occurred to me that we might consider the mechanical nature of the computer voice a deliberate feature, not a bug of technological limitations. In the episode Tomorrow is Yesterday the ship’s computer had recently been overhauled on Cygnet XIV and was given a female personality with a more natural sounding (albeit humorously annoying) voice. We can therefore say that the technology existed and the mechanical voice was at least partly a deliberate choice. At this point you are probably thinking, “So what?”
Well, one of the features of LLM-based chatbots is that they are getting increasingly good at imitating human interactions through language, whether with text or speech. This creates the powerful illusion that they are sentient and feeling, when they clearly are not. I know this point can be debated – how can we be sure they are not sentient? I maintain they are simply not built to be sentient. As an example, the same technology can be used to make pictures, but no one argues that Midjourney is sentient. So for the sake of discussion let’s stipulate LLMs are not sentient.
Why, then, program them to essentially pretend to be sentient? (MORE - details)
