COLLEGE graduations: human name readers v AI?

[Anonymous]

I help run a Departmental College graduation where we have ~165 names called. We have 2 faculty who've been doing the name reading for years - they get the list ahead of time and practice pronunciations from student-submitted help (voice memos and written phonetics). The readers alternate one by one, so the audience is not hearing the monotony of just one voice throughout a length of time, and it goes pretty well.

The idea of AI name reading (the good kind, where students pre-approve how it'll sound) has been floated as a number of graduations are using this nowadays. But I just saw a clip of a graduation where the AI glitched and missed reading some names, which would suck And at my own kid's recent ceremony, the students have to carry their phone across the stage (because a QR code is scanned before they cross to queue up the AI for their name). That wouldn't work well logistically for us since they are handed a diploma cover and do a handshake when they get onto the stage. We are not in a big arena, so the ceremony feels somewhat intimate despite being a big crowd & so to me, it seems awkward to have the names read by a disembodied entity. I asked one of our grads the other day who said she'd rather have a human read her name slightly mispronounced than have AI read it perfectly.

All that said, it's not my day, as it belongs to the students/families. So I ask you DCUM! For those who have attended COLLEGE ceremonies where names are called, especially if they are smaller (ie. <200 graduates), would you prefer AI if we worked out the logistics or would you rather have good but not perfect Humans???

[Anonymous]

Human 100%

[Anonymous]

Humans of course

[Anonymous]

Human is absolutely better of course. Just give the person reading names a phonetic name for each graduate to read so they don’t screw it up.

[Anonymous]

We've attended 2 this year, and one used the computer for the 800+ names and one a human. We didn't realize the computer wasn't a person for a while (they had male amd female computer voices that took turns). Before we realized, we had been impressed with getting all the students names pronounced correctly. Our child explained that they completed information online much earlier where they could enter the phonetic spelling, and hear the computer read it back for their approval (and they could make corrections if needed). The person reading did a good job as well, but the computer was more efficient (which woth 800+ names, we were grateful for).

Having attended both within thenpast month, my verdict is that it does not matter.

[Anonymous]

Just went to a university graduation and they announced the names as the student crossed. The student had a card with their name and cleared it with the announcer just before they crossed. I appreciated the human announcement.

[Anonymous]

Human achievement deserves a human calling out a name

[Anonymous]

This is a question? Human, 100%. (And my name was mispronounced at graduation and I'd still rather have a human).

165 names is nothing. Our high school names 700+ kids each year, and i'd still rather sit through that than a robot.

[Anonymous]

Human of course. At a graduation ceremony I recently attended, there was auto-caption on the big screen when the Deans/invited speaker took turn to give their speeches. But as soon as graduating students went on stage with their names being read one by one, the auto-caption stopped. Which was great because one could imagine the number of embarrassing errors that would occur when trying to auto-caption names from all over the world.

[Anonymous]

These kids have worked their tails off for four years, not to mention spent a great deal of money to earn their degree. The absolute very least the college can do for them is have a human take the time to learn the proper pronunciation of their names and read them as they walk across the stage. Truly, it is so upsetting to me that we have lost so much of our humanity that this is even a question.

[Anonymous]

Human lip syncs AI

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These kids have worked their tails off for four years, not to mention spent a great deal of money to earn their degree. The absolute very least the college can do for them is have a human take the time to learn the proper pronunciation of their names and read them as they walk across the stage. Truly, it is so upsetting to me that we have lost so much of our humanity that this is even a question.

The only advantage of AI, as I tried to imply, is having students pre-approve how their name will sound. We read out full names (first/middle/last), and with a diverse student population and sometimes difficult names for non-natives of whatever ethnicities the students are to pronounce, the names aren't pronounced correctly all the time even with the help they supply. To be fair, students who should know enough to supply a recording often do not despite multiple reminders, etc. I figure they deserve to have their name incorrectly pronounced if they choose to ignore the emails telling them to upload help! They also suck at providing phonetics.

[Anonymous]

Human, for sure. I had an app that used an AI voice and it was terrible. Tech is just as fallible as humans, if not more so.

This is sad state of affairs to even consider.

[Anonymous]

I'm pp and my DH and kids don't have a remotely hard name, and someone flubbed it. It does not matter.

[Anonymous]

AI i recently went to a graduation that did this and it is so much better.