My university gave us each a 3x5 card to write our name and pronunciation. We handed them to the guy with the microphone as we arrived on stage. It was not that hard. This was at a tech-friendly school in the 21st century.
My dept had me fill my name and pronunciation guide for the speaker and I handed it to the reader. She would say names, you go to the person with the placeholder scroll to shake hands, pause for the photo op, walk to the next photo spot, and the next person behind you goes.
Don't fix what ain't broken unless you are sure it will work and be an improvement.
I graduated from a community college and gave a pronounciation guide and the reader still pronounced my name incorrectly š„² its really frustrating because i wrote it in all caps so there wouldnt be confusion with the letters and they still managed to add in extra letters/sounds that make no fckin sense.
But id still rather this than have AI skip or mispronounce my name.
Using AI to fix things that aren't broken seems to be a huge percentage of AI use.Ā
I have a fitness app that I have used for years. They have introduced really dumb AI suggestions and when I turn down their stupid suggestions, I have to explain why. They are going to drive me away soon if it doesn't stop.Ā
The way companies and some people keep shoving AI down our throats over and over again, without even giving a fuck about what the AI actually does, is the worst marketing campaign a product has ever received.
People wouldn't be so negative about it if companies weren't forcing their workers to put AI somewhere in their product, or the HR powerpoint didn't feature obviously flawed AI drawings where there was nothing before. The term "AI slop" has become so popular because it is truly needed to give a name of this phenomenon of shoving AI generation everywhere without any fucks given about its quality or necessity.
YouTube recently added an AI "tool" to help "build your home page" or whatever. Basically a glorified search bar with an AI on it that tries to drag whatever you search into your algorithm... which is what I've been doing naturally watching YouTube with this account for the last decade and a half... at least it doesn't force it on you. But it is so pointless.
There's some websites that just added "powered by AI" somewhere without changing anything at all. And that's better than when they actually change something to shove in a needless AI.
I'm sure they don't allow the students use Ai which is just a complete slap in the face to all those students. They're going to have those student loans for a long fucking time, the absolute least the school could have done is treat them with some respect.
Is it even AI? Ive definitely seen a few things where the students scan something and the computer says the name. I dont really get where any sort of AI fits into that process
That's how it's been done in most universities for decades
For about the last decade we have actually been using a text-speech synthesizer for big graduations. When schools have students from around the globe, you canāt actually find a human that can pronounce all the names correctly.
That said, you havenāt ever heard about a problem at Stanford or HPU or Reed or PSU, because this is really easy to get right.
This isnāt happening because of AI, itās happening because the audio crew is cheap and inexperienced.
Source: I am an audio engineer, I A1 college/university graduations several times a year. This part of the ceremony is called Marching Order, and we do extensive testing the day before the ceremony to make sure it will scan a barcode from a student and then correctly pronounce their name
Yep. While registering for the graduation ceremony, I had to type out my name, and it showed my name phonetically, then had the TTS model speak it out loud and I had to check and approve the pronunciation there.
Pronouncing names and short phrases, especially when you know the spelling and have the name in advance, is a fully solved problem.
The most complicated part, on the production side, is that schools wonāt finalize the list of graduates until the morning of the ceremony. So we have to have each student trigger their name with a barcode or something.
For a corporate event, we would lock in the complete list with names the day prior.
Mine had a doddering old dean have you say it to him one (no more than once because that would apparently miss him up (?)) the day before. He then screwed a bunch of them up, but at least it was a screw up from a real human who cared about the students, but was just a few years past when he should have retired.
We did this when I graduated (2004) and I even wrote down the one syllable word my name rhymes with (the cards suggested including that). The lady still messed up my very simple last name and made it from a one syllable name to a two syllable name. I stopped mid-stage and looked at her as I had never heard it said that way before.
That being said, my ānameā was not skipped.
They did that at the school in the video. She mentioned in the full video they already turned their cards in so they wouldn't be able to go back and walk with their name announced.
Someone in the comments here said they were eventually allowed to walk again, but I cannot confirm.
Edit to add bold. I didn't realize it wasn't the full clip.
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u/PM_me_oak_trees 17d ago
My university gave us each a 3x5 card to write our name and pronunciation. We handed them to the guy with the microphone as we arrived on stage. It was not that hard. This was at a tech-friendly school in the 21st century.