Ann Syrdal, researcher who helped give computers a female voice, dies at 74

Ann Syrdal, psychologist and computer science researcher who helped in laying foundation for modern digital assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, died on July 24. American researcher passed away at her home in San Jose, California at age of 74. As a researcher at AT&T, Ann Syrdal was part of a small community of scientists who h started developing syntic speech systems in mid-1980s. Re on to know more about Ann Syrdal’s death.

Re | Scientists harvest eggs from last two norrn white rhinos in hopes of saving species

Ann Syrdal’s death: What was cause of researcher’s death?

According to a report in New York Times, Syrdal’s daughter Kristen Lasky has confirmed that cause of researcher's death was cancer. Ann Kristen Syrdal was born on December 13, 1945, in Minneapolis. Her parents were Richard and Marjorie (Paulson) Syrdal. Richard Syrdal was a physicist and engineer, while her mor was a sales clerk at a Minneapolis department store. Unfortunately, Ann’s far passed away when she was only 2. 

Re | Trail of bubbles les scientists to new coronavirus clue

Ann Syrdal’s impressive Career

When Syrdal enrolled at University of Minnesota, she h not considered a science career. However, when a psychology professor asked for her help with a lab experiment involving rats, she fell in love with lab work. reafter she went on to earn both bachelors and PhD degrees in psychology. She was later hired as a researcher by Callier Center for Communication Disorders at University of Texas at Dallas. 

It was in early 1980s, that Ann Syrdal began researching mechanics of human speech. She started her life long work after receiving a five-year grant from National Institutes of Health. Her work even took her to KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Re | NASA Citizen scientists project discovers new cosmic neighbors outside Solar System

Working at Bell Labs

report reveals that when Ann moved to Bell Labs, in New Jersey, she realised that female voice synsis was not a major area of research anywhere. male engineers believed that a female voice was just a higher frequency version of male voice. Hence y didn’t take female speech as seriously.

In 1990s Ann Syrdal joined a project which helped to change nature of speech synsis. Inste of generating sounds from scratch, she and her colleagues developed ways of piecing toger snippets of recorded human speech and formed new words and new sentences on fly. Dr Syrdal personally oversaw all recordings. first recordings were me with six women. When AT&T’s Natural Voices system topped at an international competition for speech synsisers in 1998, things started changing. Engineers soon began using female voices. 

13 years down line in 2011, Apple’s iPhone integrated a female voice called Siri. Both male and female voices were offered as a choice to iPhone users. Tom Gruber who was one of original Siri Cofounders at Apple stated that y included a female voice because y wanted gender equality. In many countries, including Japan, India and United States, female voices of Siri became standard.

Source: Unsplash

Re | Scientists detect Gamma ray 'heartbeat' coming from gas cloud in sync with Black Hole

Ann Syrdal’s dramatic personal life

Dr Syrdal went through three divorces in her lifetime. Her marriages to Scot O’Malley, Robert Lasky and Stephen Marcus h ended in divorce. She is survived by her daughter Kristen Lasky, and her partner of 23 years, Alistair Conkie. Conkie was also Syrdal’s co-worker at AT&T. Syrdal also has a son, Sean O’Malley, anor daughter, Barbara Evelyn Lasky and eight grandchildren.