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Computers Turn an Ear on New York City

No wonder they call New York the city that never sleeps. In fact, noise is one of the biggest civic¹ complaints made by denizens² of the Big Apple. Now, a project that uses citizen science and artificial intelligence, A.I., is trying to help. Called Sounds of New York City, or SONYC, the effort combines a network of sensors³ that constantly monitor ambient noise, along with machine learning and human volunteers.

难怪他们称纽约为不夜城。事实上，噪音是纽约居民最大的市民抱怨之一。现在，一个使用公民科学和人工智能的项目，人工智能，试图提供帮助。这项名为“纽约市之声”的计划结合了一个传感器网络，与机器学习和人类志愿者一起不断监测周围的噪音。

“The SONYC project has two main goals: we want to advance the science and engineering of machine listening, and we want to help monitor and mitigate⁴ noise pollution in urban areas.”

““纽约市之声”项目有两个主要目标:我们希望推进机器听力的科学和工程，我们希望帮助监测和减轻城市地区的噪音污染。”

Oded Nov, a professor of Technology Management and Innovation at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering.

Oded Nov是纽约大学坦顿工程学院的技术管理和创新教授。

“Over the past two years, our sensors collected huge amounts of urban sound data.” But computers don’t know what different sounds mean—until they’re trained by people.That’s where citizen science comes in: SONYC needs members of the public to listen to ambient sounds picked up by noise monitors and label the sounds so the computers can learn to independently recognize them.

“Labeling sound is harder than labeling images because sound is invisible and ephemeral.”

“在过去的两年里，我们的传感器收集了大量的城市声音数据。但是计算机不知道不同的声音是什么意思——直到它们被人类训练过。这就是公民科学发挥作用的地方: “纽约市之声”需要公众聆听噪音监测器捕捉到的环境声音，并对这些声音进行标记，以便计算机能够学会独立识别它们。“给声音贴标签比给图像贴标签难，因为声音是看不见的，而且是短暂的。”

But once people label sounds and enter them into a computer, the machines have an easier time telling, say, a jackhammer from an idling truck. “Anyone with a computer or a smartphone can participate in this research project. Search for SONYC NYU, and start labeling short sound recordings⁵ online. The more labeled examples we give our computers, the better they become at recognizing sounds.”

但是，一旦人们给声音贴上标签并将其输入电脑，这些机器就能更容易地分辨出声音，比如，一辆空转的卡车上是否有凿子。“任何拥有电脑或智能手机的人都可以参与这项研究项目。搜索“纽约市之声”，并开始标记在线录音短片。我们给电脑的例子越多，它们识别声音的能力就越强。”

The information could help inform city agencies about where they should try to cut the noise most. With a little help from citizen scientists, SONYC just might be able to let the city that doesn’t sleep finally get a little shuteye.

这些信息可以帮助城市机构了解他们应该在哪些地方尽量减少噪音。在公民科学家的一点帮助下，“纽约市之声”或许能够让这个不眠的城市最终得到一点睡眠。