This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Jim David.

No wonder they call New York the city that never sleeps. In fact, noise is one of the biggest civic complaints made by denizens of the Big Apple.

Now, a project that uses citizen science and artificial intelligence, AI, is trying to do that. A.I.

is citizen science and artificial intelligence, AI, is trying to help.

Called sounds of New York City, or Sonic, the effort combines a network of sensors that constantly

monitor ambient noise along with machine learning and

human volunteers.

The Sonic Project has two main goals.

We want to advance the science and engineering of machine listening and we want to help

monitor and mitigate noise pollution in urban areas. Oed Ed nove, a professor of

technology management and innovation at NYU's Tanden School of Engineering.

Over the past two years, our sensors collected huge amounts of urban sound data and we need

volunteers to label these sounds.

That's where citizen science comes in.

Sonic 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.

Labelling sound is harder than labeling images because sound is invisible and ephemeral.

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 Sonic NYU and start labeling short sound recordings online.

The more labeled examples we give our computers

the better they become at recognizing sounds. The information could help inform

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