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Dangers of speech technology for workplace diversity

Speech technology offers many applications to enhance employee productivity and efficiency. Yet new dangers arise for marginalized groups, potentially jeopardizing organizational efforts to promote workplace diversity. Our analysis delves into three critical risks of speech technology and offers guidance for mitigating these risks responsibly.

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Fig. 1: Risks of speech technology for marginalized employees.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for advice from A. Saiger, E. Krevat, H.-N. Teodorescu, K. Martin, ND-CMU Tech Ethics group, L. L. Wang, A. Wu and J. Deighton.

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Correspondence to Mike Horia Mihail Teodorescu.

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Nature Machine Intelligence thanks Allison Koenecke and Mathias K. Hauglid for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Teodorescu, M.H.M., Geiger, M.K. & Morse, L. Dangers of speech technology for workplace diversity. Nat Mach Intell 6, 377–380 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-024-00827-5

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