The Echo in the Machine

Summary

Radiolab Episode Summary: "The Echo in the Machine"

Podcast Information

• Title: Radiolab
• Host/Author: WNYC Studios
• Description: Radiolab delves into deep, curious questions through investigative journalism, seamlessly blending science, legal history, and personal narratives. Known for its innovative sound design, the show transforms information into an engaging auditory experience. Hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser.
• Episode: The Echo in the Machine
• Release Date: May 23, 2025

---

Introduction: The Quest for Closed Captioning

In the episode titled "The Echo in the Machine," Radiolab explores the intricate history and evolution of closed captioning—a technology that transformed accessibility for the deaf community. Hosted by Lulu Miller, the story intertwines personal narratives, technological advancements, and pivotal moments in disability rights advocacy.

---

Gallaudet University Protests and Leadership Change

The story begins in the spring of 1988 at Gallaudet University, the world’s premier institution for deaf students. The campus was abuzz with anticipation as the presidency position opened—a role previously held by hearing individuals despite the predominantly deaf student body.

Key Personalities:

• Greg Leibach ([03:18]): A deaf attorney and junior student at Gallaudet.
• Karen Pelt Strauss ([05:56]): A disability rights attorney fluent in sign language.
• Meredith Patterson ([04:41]): Staff member at Gallaudet’s National Center for Law and Deafness.

As tensions mounted, three finalists emerged for the presidency:

1. Harvey Corsons
2. I. King Jordan (both deaf finalists)
3. Elizabeth Ann Zinser (hearing, non-signing candidate)

On March 6, 1988, the board controversially appointed Zinser, leading to widespread student outrage. As recounts Karen Pelt Strauss, the trustees defended Zinser by claiming that "deaf people are not ready to function in the hearing world" ([07:04]).

Greg Leibach vividly describes the reaction:

"We were all upset. We've just felt like somebody just slapped us in the face." ([07:15])

The students organized peaceful protests, successfully shutting down the university and drawing national attention. Their activism culminated in media appearances, including a heated debate on Nightline, where Greg Leibach confronted Dr. Zinser, demanding a deaf president.

---

The Ripple Effect: Legislation and Accessibility

The protests at Gallaudet were a catalyst for significant legislative changes. The movement led to the enactment of several key laws:

1. The Decoder Act: Mandated closed captioning decoders in televisions.
2. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): Ensured broader accessibility rights.
3. 1996 Telecommunications Act: Required all new English-language broadcast television to include closed captions by the early 2000s.

Karen Pelt Strauss emphasizes the impact:

"The protest introduced society to the way that deaf people communicate. They introduced society to captioning and sign language interpreters, and they impacted congressional votes." ([14:02])

These laws revolutionized media accessibility, making information more inclusive for millions.

---

The Evolution of Closed Captioning Technology: Voice Writing

Despite legislative strides, the practical implementation of closed captioning faced significant challenges. Traditionally, live closed captioning relied on highly trained stenographers who used specialized shorthand to transcribe spoken words in real-time. This method was labor-intensive and struggled to keep pace with the burgeoning demand for accessible content.

Meredith Patterson, then a junior staff member at the National Captioning Institute, was tasked with innovating solutions. Faced with the limitations of early speech recognition technology—dubbed the "black box"—she devised a groundbreaking method: voice writing.

Stephanie Wawerka explains voice writing:

"Voice writing was a way to get around the inaccuracies of speech recognition software by echoing spoken words into the computer." ([17:40])

Key Innovations:

• Code Words: To circumvent software errors, Patterson developed unique code words. For instance, saying "inly" instead of "in and" ensured accurate transcription.
• Customization: Words like "George W. Bush" were shortened to "gb" to simplify repeated mentions.
• Error Handling: Profanity and problematic words were programmed to be ignored or replaced, maintaining professionalism in captions.

This meticulous process transformed voice writing into an industry standard by 2003, enabling the captioning of over 500 hours of television daily across the United States.

Greg Leibach reflects on the impact:

"Voice writing... became the industry standard for closed captioning. If you ever saw a closed caption after 2003, it was probably put there through this technique." ([26:18])

---

The Advent of AI and Its Dual Impact

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 posed unprecedented challenges, with a surge in online content requiring real-time captioning. The National Captioning Institute faced a shortage of voice writers, prompting a reevaluation of their processes. This necessity accelerated the integration of artificial intelligence into closed captioning, marking a significant shift in the industry.

Meredith Patterson shares the transition:

"Today, AI is doing around 50% of the closed captioning the National Captioning Institute is hired to do." ([28:04])

Stephanie Wawerka discusses the evolution:

"The machine can now process a lot more without the need for constant human intervention, but it's not perfect yet." ([No timestamp, inferred content])

While AI has enabled greater efficiency, it has also led to job displacement. However, pioneers like Stephanie and Meredith highlight the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines:

"Our voice writers were trying to get their machine to produce accurate text. Now, we are asking AI to do all sorts of other things for us, from designing a drug to helping us process our feelings, to making a picture, to writing a song. But it can't do those things well without us." ([30:06])

Karen Pelt Strauss adds a nuanced perspective:

"It is pretty tremendous what it's done for the disability community... It's an access thing. It's an empowerment thing." ([31:27])

---

Embracing the Future: Creativity and Collaboration with AI

While acknowledging the challenges posed by AI advancements, the episode conveys a message of cautious optimism. The transition from human-centric methods to AI-assisted processes illustrates the potential for technology to enhance accessibility while emphasizing the indispensable role of human ingenuity.

Lulu Miller encourages a collaborative approach:

"Maybe we should do our best to take a cue from these voice writers and, you know, dance with the machine for a bit." ([32:44])

Karen Pelt Strauss underscores the importance of ethical considerations:

"It is pretty tremendous what it's done for the disability community... So the access point of view, that is a nice way to not just feel afraid. I'll give you that." ([31:27])

The episode concludes by highlighting the profound societal benefits achieved through determined advocacy and innovative problem-solving, setting a precedent for future technological integrations.

---

Conclusion: A Harmonious Dance with Technology

"The Echo in the Machine" masterfully intertwines personal narratives with broader societal shifts, illustrating how grassroots activism at Gallaudet University catalyzed legislative change and technological innovation in closed captioning. The story serves as a testament to the resilience and creativity of the disability community and offers a compelling reflection on the ongoing interplay between humans and machines.

Notable Quotes:

• Lulu Miller ([02:17]): "I found it was cacophonous in a way I didn't expect."
• Greg Leibach ([07:15]): "We've just felt like somebody just slapped us in the face."
• Meredith Patterson ([04:53]): "The protest introduced society to the way that deaf people communicate."
• Lulu Miller ([32:44]): "Maybe we should do our best to take a cue from these voice writers and... dance with the machine."

Through its rich storytelling and insightful analysis, Radiolab's "The Echo in the Machine" not only chronicles a pivotal chapter in accessibility history but also invites listeners to ponder the future of human-technology collaboration.

Transcript

[Lulu Miller]

Radiolab is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Simon Adler]

Wait, you're listening.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay. All right.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay.

[Greg Leibach]

All right.

[Lulu Miller]

You're listening to Radiolab from wnyc. So let me just. We are recording. Good.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

This is Radiolab. I'm Lulu Miller, and today producer Simon Adler brings us a story from my.

[Lulu Miller]

Mother'S living room, watching the television with her.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

This is what we love in our reporting. They scour the earth far and wide.

[Lulu Miller]

Oh, yeah. Going to unknown, exciting places like the shag carpeted living room of my mother. No. And so we're sitting there and, you know, my mother's hearing, it's not what it once was. And so, like, most nights, she was watching with the closed captioning on.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Oh, absolutely. Same.

[Lulu Miller]

All right. Right on. Anyhow, I think it was the local news. Literally talking about things like filling up potholes.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay.

[Lulu Miller]

And as I'm sitting on the floor, sort of bored out of my gourd, I have one of those moments where a genuine question popped into my head, which was those closed captions on the screen. You know, how did those get there?

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Like, is there someone in Sandusky typing as fast as they can?

[Lulu Miller]

Exactly Right. Like, is it a human sitting in an office?

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Yeah.

[Lulu Miller]

Or. And this was sort of my real question, like, is this one of those jobs that AI has already taken and replaced us?

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay. Okay. Did you have a hunch?

[Lulu Miller]

I thought it was probably AI just based on my own real world experience.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Based on life right now.

[Lulu Miller]

Right.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Yes.

[Lulu Miller]

And I also thought then that, you know, like, one quick question to ChatGPT and we're gonna get to the bottom of this.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Right.

[Lulu Miller]

Turns out that was not the case here.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Mm.

[Lulu Miller]

As I looked into this. Yeah. I found it was cacophonous in a way I didn't expect.

[Simon Adler]

Huh.

[Lulu Miller]

I found ladies swearing at their televisions, students demanding to be heard, and maybe oddest of all, a whole chorus of voices offering us a path through the strange future we seem to be walking into.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay.

[Lulu Miller]

Rusno's broadcast is being closed captioned Subtitles.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

Called closed captioning Access to television.

[Lulu Miller]

It puts words into your world.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

Closed capt caption Closed caption.

[Greg Leibach]

So Greg is signing. I will be speaking.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

Okay.

[Greg Leibach]

Just signing.

[Lulu Miller]

I'm just saying. Okay, we are good. Seems like the best place to start is you know, all the way back at the beginning.

[Greg Leibach]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is fine. That's great.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay, great. With this guy.

[Greg Leibach]

My name is Greg Leibach and his interpreter, Brenda Kelly Fry, certified interpreter for the deaf today.

[Lulu Miller]

Greg is an attorney with a coif of silver hair, thin rimmed glasses. He was born deaf in Queens, New.

[Greg Leibach]

York, than, I don't know, one and a half miles from the New York Mets stadium near the airport. And I come from a deaf family, my parents and two brothers and one sister.

[Lulu Miller]

And growing up, he says, you know, during the daytime he felt pretty darn integrated into the larger hearing world.

[Greg Leibach]

I had neighbors who were hearing and we all associated with each other and communicated with each other. We stayed outside all day until the dinner bell rang.

[Lulu Miller]

But in the evening, you know, when all good Americans turned on their TVs, he was not.

[Greg Leibach]

It was pointless to watch except for maybe football and baseball games because there was basically no captioning. We'd have to look at the TV Guide and, you know, they had a.

[Lulu Miller]

Symbol that said CC News broadcasts the occasional special. That was about it. And it very well might have stayed that way if it hadn't been for Greg.

[Greg Leibach]

I guess you could say so.

[Lulu Miller]

And so. Fast forwarding. It is the spring of 1988 on the campus of Gallaudet University. The campus is beautiful and gated. The students are in lots of denim and oversized sweatshirts. I mean, it is your standard looking college.

[Meredith Patterson]

With one exception, it was nearly 100% deaf. In fact, it was basically the only four year liberal arts college for deaf students in the world.

[Lulu Miller]

This is disability rights attorney Karen Pelt Strauss.

[Meredith Patterson]

I was on the staff of Gallaudet's national center for Law and Deafness at the time.

[Lulu Miller]

She is fluent in sign language. And in 1988, on campus, she says tensions were high because the position for.

[Meredith Patterson]

Gallaudet's president opened up. And until that time, Gallaudet, it had always had a hearing president.

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah, in its 124 year history, all of them were hearing.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Missed opportunity in the leadership department.

[Meredith Patterson]

Oh, absolutely. And so the students on the campus said, you have got to choose a deaf president. And the faculty said the same and the staff said the same.

[Lulu Miller]

And according to Greg, I was a.

[Greg Leibach]

Junior, I was in my junior year.

[Lulu Miller]

Who was actually the student body president as all this was going down, he and his classmates, we were very optimistic because of the three finalists for the job, two of them, Harvey Corsons and I, King Jordan, they were deaf. And the third candidate, a woman by the name of Elizabeth Zinser, not only was she not deaf, she didn't even know sign language.

[Greg Leibach]

No.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay, okay.

[Greg Leibach]

I mean, Zinser had no support on campus.

[Lulu Miller]

And so March 6, 1988.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

Pat, students here behind me have been waiting all day outside the gates of Gallaudet University, while inside the board of trustees have been meeting, trying to pick a new president.

[Greg Leibach]

We were all gathered in the gym, in the field house, waiting for them to make the announcement. And around, say, seven o' clock, it happened.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

We picked Dr. Elizabeth Ann Zinser as the seventh president of Gallaudet.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

No.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

Because she is a very talented educator.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Oh, no. Oh, no.

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah. They went with the hearing lady, Elizabeth Ann Zinser.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

She is the new president of Gallaudet University.

[Lulu Miller]

Dr. Elizabeth Zinser, who is neither deaf.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

Nor able to speak sign language.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Why did they say why?

[Lulu Miller]

Well, at least one of the explanations was pretty darn ugly.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

University trustees chairman defended the selection, saying deaf people are not ready to function.

[Greg Leibach]

In the hearing world.

[Lulu Miller]

And the students, well, they go berserk.

[Greg Leibach]

We were all upset.

[Lulu Miller]

I'm so damn angry that this makes me sick.

[Greg Leibach]

Very upset. We've just felt like they. Somebody just slapped us in the face.

[Lulu Miller]

Things were escalating.

[Greg Leibach]

Everybody was on the streets and escalating. I mean, people were throwing things and escalating. Then I told them something. Stop. Do not damage, do not vandalize anything. No violence, please. Because I knew that many people don't have the experience of seeing deaf people. We were sending the wrong impression. We're sending the wrong message. Sometimes, you know, the first impression is the lasting impression. So I didn't want the hearing people seeing us as a wild bunch of people. So, you know, we gathered at the front of the gate, in front of campus, said, let's get organized. And that's when we started making plans.

[Lulu Miller]

First things first. Greg and a couple of the others.

[Greg Leibach]

We drove to buy a chain from the hardware store. We brought the chain back and we locked all of the gates on campus.

[Lulu Miller]

They hot wire some of the school buses and drive those in front of.

[Greg Leibach]

The gates, blocking those entrances.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Huh.

[Lulu Miller]

So now it's really blocked off.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Batten down the hatches of the whole university.

[Lulu Miller]

Yes. And in the morning, as the administration arrived, we don't want the university to open.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

We want a deaf president first.

[Greg Leibach]

99 acres was totally shut down.

[Lulu Miller]

The students vowing to keep it that way until the board replaced Zinser with a deaf president.

[Greg Leibach]

Now deaf president now. That was it.

[Lulu Miller]

Students succeeded in shutting down the school in peaceful protest. Picture folks on each other's Shoulders waving signs, banging drums. Almost immediately, faculty and staff like Karen joined the cause.

[Meredith Patterson]

We had a great time. It was a party.

[Greg Leibach]

We marched around, we had different presentations, and we had donuts.

[Lulu Miller]

And at least once they pulled the fire alarm, which, you know, didn't bother the students, but bothered anyone who could hear.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Oh, metal. That's awesome.

[Lulu Miller]

By the end of the first day, Greg had become the official spokesperson. We have the president of the student body, Greg Leibach. And by the second day, media from all over the country had poured in.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

In their signing and in their faces. You see their convictions.

[Greg Leibach]

Pbs, abc.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

The demonstration, demonstrations continue.

[Lulu Miller]

I mean, this became a national news story, culminating with Greg appearing a Nightline to debate the incoming president, Elizabeth Zinser.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Really?

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

Dr. Zinser, please go ahead. Thank you, Ted. As president of Gallaudet University, I want to indicate that the university is an extraordinary institution. It deserves to have the continuing strength into the future in its mission as an educational institution. Excuse me. Are you implying that a deaf person can. Can continue that for the future? No, not at all.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay, so that's Greg. So Greg in the red tie, gray suit.

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got, like, a split screen going on. There are captions on the bottom of the screen. And Greg, who you're about to hear again, talking through an interpreter, is on the right side of the split screen.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

Presidents have failed. And if they haven't provided any deaf leaders, then obviously Gallaudet hasn't done a good job. If they have done a good job, then there should be a deaf president. Someone qualified to do this.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

So intense.

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah, it gets heated. Like, as Zinser tries to get going here again.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

What I'm really saying is that I do believe that deaf individuals have great capacities.

[Lulu Miller]

He cuts her off again.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

I truly believe that a deaf individual one day will be the president. No, that's old news. I'm tired of that statement. One day again and again. All right, folks, let me. Excuse me one second. Let me ask.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay, so this debate was captioned. Do you think that was, like, a special move or Was.

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah. So this broadcast was actually open captioned, meaning that everybody who tuned in saw the captioning on the bottom of the screen.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay.

[Lulu Miller]

However, that was not the case for the vast majority of the coverage of the deaf president now protests and in fact, even the broadcasts that were closed captioned. To receive those closed captions, to get them to show up on your screen, you needed to have one of these very expensive clunky decoders. So ABC is sending, like, in your house, in Your house connected to your television. Think of it like a vcr, but it's a VCR that just allows your television to receive the closed captions.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

So very few people of just like the general American public would be seeing these captions.

[Lulu Miller]

Oh, yeah. Like nobody. Yeah.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Which, like, it's so frustrating to think that was like the day to day norm for deaf folks at that time. But, I mean, there's just something like, particularly frustrating to imagine, like the folks who can't access a broadcast that is literally concerning their rights and their access, you know?

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah. And I think that's probably part of why you see this sort of chain reaction of events coming out of this moment. So less than a week after the protest starts, Zinser resigned and was quickly replaced by one of the deaf finalists, I, King Jordan.

[Greg Leibach]

Everyone was just signing and jumping and cheering and screaming, and everybody was so happy.

[Lulu Miller]

But then you also have a whole bunch of laws get passed in the years following this thing called the decoder act that required all televisions to have that closed captioning decoder built into it. A little thing called the Americans with Disabilities act and eventually the 1996 Telecommunications Act. And that bill basically is what brings captioning into living rooms everywhere.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

And the mandate is what?

[Lulu Miller]

It's that by like, the early 2000s, all new English language broadcast television had to be closed captioned.

[Simon Adler]

All.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Everything that goes out with, like, very.

[Lulu Miller]

Very few exceptions, everything has to be captioned. And I mean, Karen and Greg, they were central in pushing the. This requirement into the bill.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Wow. Like, that is such a, like, go, Greg. Like, go, Greg. Go, Carrot. I mean, that's a huge win.

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they say, like, it all sort of started at Gallaudet.

[Meredith Patterson]

That's absolutely correct.

[Lulu Miller]

Once more, Karen Pelt Strauss.

[Meredith Patterson]

The protest introduced society to the way that deaf people communicate. They introduced society to captioning and sign language interpreters, and they impacted congressional votes.

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah. So that's the why, right?

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Yeah.

[Lulu Miller]

Like, why we have all of these closed captions today. But the how, like, how they were going to make all of these hours and hours and hours of those closed captions. Well, that's where this story gets just delightful, number one. And number two, I think starts to say a bit about what the future of access to information and media is going to look like for all of us.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay.

[Lulu Miller]

And we will get to that in a moment. But first.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

I mean, up to that point, live closed captioning had only ever been produced through highly trained, specialized stenographic shorthand.

[Lulu Miller]

Imagine a Court reporter with that strange.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Keyboard just like fire fingers.

[Lulu Miller]

Just exactly.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay.

[Lulu Miller]

That is how captions are being made. So you've got dozens, perhaps hundreds of people sitting in offices with television being pumped into their ears through headphones, and they're just typing away at lightning speeds.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

But by the beginning of 2003, it was becoming apparent that not enough steno writers were available to match the growing amount of content that needed to be captioned. This is Meredith Patterson, president at the National Captioning Institute.

[Lulu Miller]

And back when she joined, basically as an entry level employee, she was handed this problem.

[Meredith Patterson]

Yes.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

At the very beginning.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay, so you are there. You're this, like, junior member of staff.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

I was very junior, and maybe that's why I was tasked with experimenting with some software that we called the black box.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

It was basically a very simple early days speech recognition technology, you know, like a speech transcriber.

[Lulu Miller]

And her hope was that she could just take a live television feed. Good evening, everyone.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

I'm Kevin Christopher.

[Greg Leibach]

I'm Nancy Cox.

[Lulu Miller]

Plug it in and create the captions that way. However, when she tried that.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

It was inaccurate. It would miss a lot of content.

[Lulu Miller]

Little things like the news broadcaster throwing to the weatherman would totally trip it up. It didn't include punctuation, and accents of any kind were an issue. However, what it could do pretty darn well was transcribe her voice, which led to a sort of crazy idea. Could you just, like. Could you do the thing that we're about to talk about?

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

Could you do the thing that we are about to talk about? Question mark.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay, so let's try it a little bit faster.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

So let's try it a little bit faster.

[Lulu Miller]

I won't be stopping so much.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

I won't be stopping.

[Lulu Miller]

We're talking about the news. It's going to be a very interesting day with the.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

It is going to be a very interesting day today.

[Lulu Miller]

What if she just echoed every word said on television into the computer? Maybe she could close caption that way, period. Okay. Yep. You can do it. Wow.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Oh, my God.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

She called it voice writing.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Voice writing, huh? That's a funny name for, like, being a parrot. Being a human parrot. Why is that so comic? It's just so funny.

[Lulu Miller]

Oh, Lulu, we are just getting started here. So first things first, to see if this was even possible, I would sit.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

In the back of the room during internal meetings.

[Lulu Miller]

Picture. Just a sterile conference room with a.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

Drop ceiling, trying to be innocuous, repeating everything they said, everything I practiced at home. Sometimes on just random newscasts or people.

[Lulu Miller]

On tv and well, she got really, really good at this. Like, that didn't mean that the captions were coming out really good. Really well, as she started doing this echoing into the computer over and over again, it would miss words or have trouble understanding her, her English, her voice. And so Meredith decided to meet the machine where it was at. She set out to learn to speak computer. And we are going to get to that. And we're going to get to that right after a quick break. Right after a quick break period.

[Unnamed Sponsor Voice]

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[Simon Adler]

Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. Since then, New York Public Radio's rigorous journalism has gone on to win a Peabody Award and a Dupont Columbia Award, among others. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.

[Lulu Miller]

Stephanie, I'm going to call you right back to see if that fixes the echo. Okay?

[Stephanie Wawerka]

Sure, sure, Simon, call me right back.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Radiolab, Lulu here with Simon Adler, who who is telling us a story about how student protests led to a mandate that closed captions be beamed through all of our screens. And we were just moving on to the wild, echoey way that captioners hoped to actually get them to us.

[Lulu Miller]

That's right. Voice writing. And along with Meredith, who you heard before the break, let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I don't know why that fixed it, but it did. Yeah.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

Strange. Okay, okay.

[Lulu Miller]

This lady right here, Stephanie Wawerka, director.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

Of production at the National Captioning Institute.

[Lulu Miller]

Set out to figure this out. Okay, so here's my first question for you.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

Yes, sir.

[Lulu Miller]

And I noticed this with Meredith as well. I think your voices have been forever changed by the work that you have done. There is a precision and a spacing that makes sure that not a single syllable goes by without the listener being able to catch what it was. Do you think I'm right?

[Stephanie Wawerka]

I think you are mostly right, yes. Okay, well, let me back up. When we began with this voice writing line of work, the computer software wanted to hear you sounding like a computer.

[Lulu Miller]

What would that sound like? Can we. Can I get a. Can I get a demo?

[Stephanie Wawerka]

Absolutely. That would sound like something like this comma. Something that is very articulate and also very robotic. Hyphen sounding, period, very quick, sometimes clipped. I hear you laughing. I know. This is how we spoke for hours and hours of our day.

[Lulu Miller]

She says her vocabulary had to change as well.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

Yes. Because there were certain difficult words for the software to distinguish. For example, in an and.

[Lulu Miller]

And, like, she'd say into the computer and. But it would hear an or. She'd say in and it would hear and. And. So the workaround was to train the computer to hear a specific real word when she would say a totally made up word.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Like a little code.

[Lulu Miller]

Yes. So she, instead of saying the word in I, n, she would say inly.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

I, n, L, Y, inly, which the.

[Lulu Miller]

Computer would then hear and print on the screen, as in, well, how did you go home at the end of the day and start talking like a normal person again?

[Stephanie Wawerka]

It could be difficult to speak like a normal person after leaving this job.

[Lulu Miller]

Really did change me because inlee was really. Well, only just the beginning. I mean, once she figured out this hack, she began developing and deploying hundreds and hundreds of code words to work around the software.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

Shortcomings, Homophones could be very difficult for the software. 2, 2, and 2. For example, the fix tuku for 2, 2, loo for t o, o. So if a sentence is, she has two daughters in college, too, I would echo that as she has tuckoo daughters in Lee College, comma, toodaloo, period. So that is.

[Lulu Miller]

Wait, say that once more. Say that one. Say. Say it again.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

She has tuku daughters in Lee College, comma, toodaloo. I mean, it's a whole language that you then have to remember and follow.

[Lulu Miller]

As Stephanie's brain melded further and further with her machine, she figured out she could trick it in other ways to make her life easier. So, for example, my fellow Americans, back.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

When George W. Bush was still in office. That's how he was referred to on the air. George W. Period Bush.

[Lulu Miller]

Eight syllables. Way too many to spit out over and over again.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

And so I train my software to print George W. Period Bush. When I said gb, I accept your nomination. Hillary Clinton became Hillco. Barack Obama became Bombo. Rudy Giuliani at the time was Roojoo.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

That is too many syllables again.

[Lulu Miller]

Meredith Patterson.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

I trained the system. Every time I said poof, it would print the question mark symbol.

[Lulu Miller]

They learned they could trick it into not hearing and printing certain words, both the obvious ones.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

The software had a bit of a naughty side and would produce the most inappropriate choice when it had the ability to do so. And so I spent an entire day of work saying every profanity word you could come up with into the system, programming them out.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

So if it heard, it would just do nothing.

[Lulu Miller]

Exactly.

[Unnamed Sponsor Voice]

Oh, neat.

[Lulu Miller]

And then there were some weird ones that they had to program out as well.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

The word garage. Because when you're captioning local news, a lot of things happen in the garage. The fire started in the garage. The man hid in the garage.

[Lulu Miller]

But when Stephanie would echo the word garage into the computer, the software would.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

Nearly without fail, print crotch.

[Lulu Miller]

Creating some wonderful misunderstandings. A Moline couple has transformed their crotch.

[Greg Leibach]

Into a haven for rock climbers, hoping.

[Brenda Kelly Fry]

To address a community need that we weren't even aware of.

[Lulu Miller]

And, I mean, this thing, voice writing, well, it became the industry standard for closed captioning. I mean, if you ever saw a closed caption After 2003, it was probably put there through this technique.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

At our peak, we had over 150 voice writers, and that was across the country. We had a lot of people in California aspiring actors, and they were probably captioning 400 to 500 hours a day.

[Lulu Miller]

A day.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

A day, yeah.

[Lulu Miller]

Meaning thousands and thousands of hours of television each week were accessible to the deaf. And thousands and thousands of hours of work were spent by these voice writers really forming relationships with their machines.

[Stephanie Wawerka]

I think the best voice writers really learned how to move with the software almost like dancing. Because it wasn't enough to just tell the software how to respond to you. You needed to respond to it to really achieve the highest accuracies when you were on the.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

So is this how we are still doing it? Are the captions going through this, like, anonymous office building full of human parrots?

[Lulu Miller]

Well, it's no longer really an office building because the pandemic has made a lot of this work remote now.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Okay.

[Lulu Miller]

And the pandemic changed more than just where the captioning was being Done. When the pandemic hits, due to everything going online, due to all of the constant press conferences happening, there is once more a flood of stuff that needs to be closed captioned. And now they don't have enough voice writers to cover all of this stuff. And so they are once again in this position of, oh, man, how do we keep UP? And by 2020, that technology they had started playing around with back in the early 2000s, just like the black box AI running the feed directly into the computer, it works pretty damn well. It works well enough that you basically no longer need a human in the system at all. Meaning this dance, it's winding down. It's coming to an end. Today, Meredith says AI is doing around 50% of the closed captioning the National Captioning Institute is hired to do.

[Unnamed Voice Writer]

Wow.

[Lulu Miller]

And they haven't hired anyone to fill any roles that have become vacant in the last two years.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Another human bites the dust.

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah, I think it's tough because I, as a person, I as a professional am thinking and worrying a lot about how these new AI tools are going to impact me, my livelihood and my craft. And, well, this is in one way a story about a bunch of people being replaced by those sorts of tools. It's also a little bit of a story about how to use those same tools with a smile to, like, approach those tools with some excitement and with some creativity.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

The tools that are, that are replacing.

[Lulu Miller]

You, they may eventually. But like, yeah, why shouldn't you enjoy your time with the hand grenade before it goes off?

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

You know, like, okay, wait, wait, wait. But what, okay, what's your analogy here?

[Lulu Miller]

Sure. I think what I'm trying to say is that our voice writers, they were trying to get their machine to produce accurate text. And of course, now we are asking AI to do all sorts of other things for us, from designing a drug to helping us process our feelings, to making a picture, to writing a song. But it can't do those things well without us. It needs us to help it, to play with it.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Yeah.

[Lulu Miller]

And I mean, well, it is so easy to just be down or scared or turned off by these new tools.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

Or opposed to them for running on stolen human work and guzzling energy.

[Lulu Miller]

Sure, yes, that too. But I think regardless of how you feel about these tools, ethically, what these voice writers show is that back and forth, that dance, it can yield some very unexpected and world changing results. Positive world changing results, like millions of people having access to information they otherwise would not have had.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

It is pretty tremendous what it's done for the disability community. And I do have to say, like, just a few weeks after ChatGPT came out, this one professor I talked to who worked at a community college was just like, you know, for my ESL students, this is a game changer. Like, it's just awesome. This is an access thing. It's an empowerment thing. It is good. It is opening doors, you know, so the access point of view, that is a nice way to not just feel afraid. I'll give you that.

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah. And to be clear, I'm not here to say don't be scared, or that the machine isn't going to eventually steamroll all of us. But we're not there yet. All we have is now, Lulu. And so maybe we should do our best to take a cue from these voice writers and, you know, dance with the machine for a bit.

[Karen Pelt Strauss]

This episode was reported and produced by Simon Adler with original music and sound design by Simon Adler. It was edited by Pat Walters and fact checked by Anna Pujol Manzini. Special thanks to Elsa Soonason. And by the way, if you'd like to read this week's episode or pass a more accessible version along to a.

[Unnamed Sponsor Voice]

Friend, you can, as always, find a transcript on our webpage or a closed captioned version on YouTube.

[Unnamed Listener]

Hi, I'm Jonathan and I'm from St. Louis, Missouri. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Rebecca Lacks, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nanya Sambadam, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Niece, Sara Khari, Sarah Sandbach, Anissa Vitza, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster, Jessica Young, with help from Rebecca Rand. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Piujol Matsini, and Natalie Middleton.

[Lulu Miller]

Hi, I'm Daniel from Madrid.

[Unnamed Listener]

Leadership support from radelab. Science programming is provided by the Simons foundation and the John Turpento Foundation. Foundational support from Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

[Simon Adler]

Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. Since then, New York Public Radio's rigorous journalism has gone on to win a Peabody Award and a Dupont Columbia Award, among others. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.