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When you call a company and hear the line “This call is being recorded for training and quality control,” you might assume it’s being done to ensure their employees are doing their job.
But the company could be listening to you, too – and not just what you say, but how you sound. With this information, they could try to surmise your emotions, learn about your personality and perhaps even your physical characteristics.
Communication scholar Joseph Turow has spent the past few years poring through patents, trade industry articles and surveillance laws. He explains how the voice data being gathered by call centers, smart speakers and intelligent car displays is set to upend advertising and marketing. And should governments fail to act, he says, these shifts portend a new level of privacy invasion.
Also today:
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Nick Lehr
Arts + Culture Editor
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Companies could soon tailor what they try to sell you based on the mood conveyed by the sound of your voice.
CSA-Printstock via Getty Images
Joseph Turow, University of Pennsylvania
Marketers will soon be able to use AI-assisted vocal analysis to gain insights into shoppers' inclinations – without people knowing what they're revealing or how that information is being interpreted.
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Economy + Business
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Stephanie Leiser, University of Michigan
President Biden wants to raise the capital gains tax that wealthy people pay and use the extra revenue to fund new social spending on children and education.
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Environment + Energy
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Lisa Schulte Moore, Iowa State University
Farmers can help slow climate change by mixing native grasses into croplands, restoring wetlands and raising perennial crops. These strategies also conserve soil and water and build new markets.
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Politics + Society
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Sean G. Massey, Binghamton University, State University of New York; Mei-Hsiu Chen, Binghamton University, State University of New York; Sarah Young, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Women's sexual identities and behaviors are changing in ways men's are not.
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Raymond Scheppach, University of Virginia
The headlines were inescapable: States faced a financial disaster of epic proportions because of COVID-19. The predictions were wrong.
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Health
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Letícia Marteleto, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts
Officials in Brazil recently asked women to avoid pregnancy, citing heightened new risk to them and newborns. But births were already dropping; a new study attributes it to the trauma of Zika.
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Science + Technology
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Wendy Whitman Cobb, US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
The first space tourist left Earth 20 years ago aboard a Russian rocket. Now, private companies are on the cusp of offering trips off Earth for those who can pay.
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Tahira Reid, Purdue University
A mechanical engineer brings her personal experiences to address human-centered problems and encourage 'compassionate design.'
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Education
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Eric Brunner, University of Connecticut; Ben Hoen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Joshua Hyman, Amherst College
Despite a growth in revenue from wind farms, many rural school districts are being nudged by policy and law to spend the money on buildings and not instruction.
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Ethics + Religion
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David Lincicum, University of Notre Dame
The biblical story of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt is also a historical tale of reparations after enslavement.
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Christopher Schelin, Starr King School for the Ministry
Excommunicating a church member, like 'canceling' someone on social media, serves to cleanse the body politic of behavior deemed damaging, suggests a scholar of political theology.
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Brian McNoldy, University of Miami
That doesn't mean sea level rise has stopped – it hasn't. When that lunar cycle starts upward again, it will mean double trouble for places like Miami.
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Dudley L. Poston Jr., Texas A&M University
The US Census Bureau has announced which states will gain and lose representation in Congress as a result of the 2020 census. Here's how it makes the calculations.
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Scott Shackelford, Indiana University
The courts have given the government the authority to hack into private computers unannounced. The action addresses a clear threat, but it also sets an unsettling precedent.
Today’s graphic
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