I just went to get my hearing checked for the first time, and it's fine, the doctor said my responses are great for someone my age.

But in a noisy environment - not even that noisy, just kind of any noise at all - I'm functionally deaf. My child was telling me something while rubbing two balloons together and I had to get her to put them down before I could parse what she was saying.

I know there's obvious privacy issues with this thing, but man, it would be great to be able to pop in a pair of earbuds and be able to hold a conversation with someone while cars are driving nearby.

The non-AI version is better: Using multiple microphones, you can use time-of-flight to isolate multiple voices in a crowd, and separate them into distinct, clear audio tracks.