New Horizons in Science

The human brain was wired for speech, and now machines are being built to take advantage of that. Nass has discovered that even crude computer speech can trigger a profound human response we so want to believe those voices are real. Can we use that response to improve machine-human communication? Would a female-sounding computerized physics tutor encourage more women to become physicists? Can a car's navigation system encourage you to drive more safely? Or might it irritate you enough to provide a dangerous distraction? Nass has the data.