35.226, Internships: Phonetics, Sociolinguistics: Internship, An internship in linguistics or a closely related field to contribute to a project aiming to mitigate demographic bias in speech technology., SRI International

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-35-226. Wed Jan 17 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.226, Internships: Phonetics, Sociolinguistics: Internship, An internship in linguistics or a closely related field to contribute to a project aiming to mitigate demographic bias in speech technology., SRI International

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Date: 13-Jan-2024
From: Erica Saunders [erica.saunders at sri.com]
Subject: Phonetics, Sociolinguistics: Internship, An internship in linguistics or a closely related field to contribute to a project aiming to mitigate demographic bias in speech technology., SRI International


University or Organization: SRI International
Type of Work: 3
Linguistic Field(s): Phonetics
                     Sociolinguistics
Voluntary
Internship Location: Remote, Fully Remote
Minimum Education Level: 3
Special Qualifications: Ideally the intern will be a graduate student
(though advanced undergrads are welcome to apply) with:
 - Background in sociolinguistics through coursework or research
 - At least introductory level phonetics (additional semester
preferred)

Please provide a 1 page cover letter as part of your application.  If
you have any questions or issues adding a cover letter please email
employment at sri.com with "DEBUTS" in the subject line.

The salary is: $40/hr. Salary ranges will vary and are based on
several factors, including geographic location, market competitiveness
and equity amongst internal employees in similar roles. Positions may
also qualify for SRI's Pay for Outstanding Performance program or the
annual Performance Based Compensation program. SRI also has a
competitive benefits package, to view details please go to
https://www.sri.com/resources/benefits/.

SRI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, making decisions without regard
to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender
identity, marital status, national origin, age, veteran status,
disability, or any other protected class.

Description:
SRI’s Information & Computing Sciences Division is taking on some of
the world’s most important challenges, creating leading-edge
technology solutions that have revolutionary impact.  Our researchers
are redefining the way human beings interact with machines and with
one another through machines, as we define what’s next in artificial
intelligence, machine learning, and computing for the real world.

SRI’s Speech Technology and Research (STAR) Laboratory brings together
a multidisciplinary mix of engineers, computer scientists and
linguists. Together our experts build systems for a wide range of
applications including signal processing; data indexing and mining;
and computer-aided learning.

The STAR Lab at SRI seeks an advanced undergrad or graduate intern in
linguistics or a closely related field to contribute to a project
aiming to mitigate demographic bias in speech technology. This
National Institute of Justice-funded project will conduct a scientific
investigation of speaker trait bias in speaker identification (SID)
systems. The goal of SID is to determine whether a speaker in a
recording is the same as the speaker on a separate recording, kind of
like fingerprinting but for voice. Pilot work in our lab found that
SID systems are more likely to confuse different speakers for one
another if both (1) they both speak the same variety of English, and
(2) that variety is not well represented in the training data. This
project seeks a new solution to this problem, characterizing the
acoustic and model bases of this bias in order to recognize and
prevent it.

We seek an intern who uses an American English dialect or speech
variety that is historically underrepresented. The intern’s lived
experience and speaker intuition, combined with their knowledge of
linguistics, is critical to understanding the dimensions along which
these SID models are likely to fail, as well as for curating a variety
of relevant data. Just a few examples of such speech are African
American English/Black American English, Chicano English, or trans
voices.

The intern will be able to work remotely.  We are open to the intern
working part-time now through the summer or a full time summer intern.

Responsibilities:
While your primary task will be curating a highly diverse set of audio
data from available corpora, we will work together to pick additional
tasks that suit your interests and experience; a few examples are
listed below. In addition, we hope that this internship will give you
an idea of what a career in speech/linguistics could look like in
industry, if that is something you’ve been wondering about.

Required tasks:
 - Corpus wrangling (identifying useful data, conducting tests for
data quality)
 - Attending regular project meetings

Additional tasks can include, depending on intern’s experience and
interest:
 - Acoustics analyses
 - Statistics/data analysis (looking at relationships between acoustic
data and model outputs)
 - Coding analysis software
 - Writing portions of a paper (e.g. literature review, methods,
analysis, etc.—you will of course be included in the author list on
any and all publications resulting from your work!).

Application Deadline: Open until filled.

Web Address for Applications:
https://careers-sri.icims.com/jobs/5753/intern%2c-linguistics/job
Application Instructions:
Please apply using the link in the posting.

Contact Information:
        Menlo Park office
        Email: employment at sri.com



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