Our guest this week is Shahruk Hossain, an all-around expert in all things speech tech, who joins us from Bangladesh to talk about talking ovens, voicebots to check in on hospital patients after they're discharged, and the definition of "factotem".

With a background in corporate management and a passion for maximizing efficiency, David has consistently sought out cutting-edge solutions to streamline processes and drive success.

As the founder of Clarity Creative, a leading digital marketing agency, David has spearheaded initiatives to leverage speech recognition technology, notably utilizing Otter.ai to record and transcribe meetings seamlessly. 

His forward-thinking approach has not only transformed how his team communicates and collaborates but has also significantly enhanced client satisfaction and project turnaround times.

David's philosophy of "productive laziness" underscores his commitment to finding efficient solutions to complex challenges, inspiring his team to embrace innovation and prioritize effectiveness in their endeavors. 

Beyond his entrepreneurial pursuits, David is dedicated to sharing his expertise and insights, actively engaging with industry peers to explore the vast potential of speech and voice technology in diverse contexts.

With a keen focus on continual improvement and a drive to push the boundaries of what is possible, David Forman stands at the forefront of the digital marketing landscape, guiding businesses toward greater efficiency, productivity, and success through the power of speech technology.

Main Takeaways

1. Efficiency through Technology: David demonstrates how embracing speech and voice technology, exemplified by Otter.ai, can significantly enhance productivity and streamline business operations, particularly in recording and transcribing meetings with precision and ease.

2. Productive Laziness Philosophy: David's concept of "productive laziness" highlights the importance of seeking efficient solutions to tasks and processes, ultimately freeing up time for more meaningful endeavors and driving progress in both personal and professional spheres.

3. Future of Speech Technology: Looking ahead, David envisions further advancements in speech technology, including automatic summarization of meetings and task assignment based on transcriptions, underscoring the transformative potential of AI-driven solutions in reshaping work dynamics and communication methods.

Key Timestamps

[00:01:41] Introduction of David Forman by Darin and Jeff, highlighting his expertise in leveraging speech and voice technology to transform business operations.

[00:06:21] David explains the concept of "productive laziness" from his previous job, emphasizing the importance of finding efficient solutions to tasks and processes.

[00:09:55] David discusses his vision for the future of speech technology, including automatic summarization of meetings and task assignment based on transcriptions.

[00:15:57] Jeff compares Cobalt's speech technology with Otter.ai, highlighting Cobalt's focus on providing core technology for integration into other platforms and discussing ongoing projects in emotion and speaker recognition.

[00:17:36] Advancements in speech technology, such as task assignment based on transcriptions, and emphasizes the importance of characterizing speakers' voices for enhanced functionality, offering a glimpse into the future of Cobalt's developments.

Guest Quotes

1. "Productive laziness is about finding more time to do things efficiently, not wasting time on unnecessary tasks." - David Forman

2. "Speech and voice technology have unlocked a new level of efficiency in our meetings, allowing us to focus on meaningful tasks rather than tedious note-taking." - David Forman

3. "Embrace innovation and prioritize effectiveness in your endeavors to drive progress and success in both personal and professional spheres." - David Forman

Our guest this week is Ryan Lish, a Cobalt superstar with expertise in speech recognition, speech understanding, and language data.

Ryan also talks about his Halloween project of an interactive Gollum to scare the neighbors, and the time he flew a paper airplane hundreds of meters and into an open window!

He believes that AI is not just coming, it's been changing the world for at least the past 15 years. From smartphones to voice-enabled devices like Alexa, AI is already all around us. 

Manuj sees a future where AI will not take over humanity or cause mass unemployment, but will instead displace some jobs while creating new and more satisfying opportunities for those who upskill themselves and become early adopters. He is excited about the potential of AI to change the world and looks forward to helping others navigate the transformation it will bring.

In our interview with him, Manuj shares his optimistic view on AI and its potential to create a harmonious utopian world. He talks about how AI can afford humanity almost anything and build more harmonious relationships. 

He envisions a more fulfilling lifestyle as a result of AI and how AI technology is already present in every device from smartphones to voice assistants. 

We also discuss how AI will lead to fundamental shifts in how we think about human life, creating hyper-personalized customer service and even personalized medicine and healthcare.  

Listen to this episode to discover more about the potential benefits of AI, the importance of enhancing voice and speech, and the significance of having an open mind when it comes to adapting new tech. 

Key Takeaways

• The positive potential of AI in creating a utopian world 
• Efficiency and cost-effectiveness of AI in producing resources 
• AI's ability to simulate all human senses, including speech, and detect COVID through coughs 
• AI's presence in common technology and its optimization of the technology we currently use
• The displacement of some jobs with the introduction of new technology 
• Machine-led thinking and increased value placed on emotional intelligence 
• Personalization through AI and its potential use in personalized medicine 
• Darin’s personal story and fear of the unknown with AI

Timestamps

[00:00:22] Darin’s "Viper" story.

[00:06:10] AI mimics human senses, detects COVID via cough.

[00:08:21] Taking action for success.

[00:11:10] Enhance your voice, and how you can build a community and solve problems.

[00:15:46] AI recognizes diseases through coughs.

[00:18:02] Voice recognition technology enables personalized service.

Quotes

• The Impact of AI on Jobs: "AI is not going to take over humanity. It is not going to cause mass unemployment. Yes, there will be some job displacement, but that always happens when a new groundbreaking technology is introduced."
• The Future of Emotional Intelligence: "We are entering what I call a post thinking era...we are going to be valuing emotional intelligence more than our intellectual intelligence."

Connect with Manuj 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manujaggarwal/?originalSubdomain=ca 

Website - https://www.manujaggarwal.com/ 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/manujagro 

A great story that Allison shares is about how she once experienced the oddity of hearing her voice wake her up in a hotel room. Allison's husband even downloaded a fitness app with her voice to motivate him at the gym, but eventually switched to a different voice due to her constant encouragement. 

Despite these amusing experiences, Allison Smith continues to be a highly sought-after voice artist in the industry.

On today’s episode, we discuss the various advancements in text to speech technology. 

We touch on the possibility of developing a system that can detect someone's truthfulness and the challenges of doing so. 

We also talk about ChatGPT, which is capable of mimicking a human voice flawlessly. Allison suggests that a hybrid approach combining both human and AI voices will be the future of the industry. 

Key Takeaways

• Detecting lies and synthetic voices: Allison discusses the challenges of developing a system that can detect when someone is lying or telling the truth, as people have different ways of interpreting what sounds truthful. They also talk about the rise of new synthetic voices that mimic human speech and are used in entertainment, language localization, and other areas.
• Good IVR and vocal inflections: Allison explains the importance of having good interactive voice response (IVR) prompts that flow naturally and sound like a human conversation. They also discuss the importance of using different vocal inflections for numbers, dates, and other information.
• Voice-over experience and AI voices: Allison’s experience as a voice-over artist for various clients, including medical ads that require them to sound cheerful while listing side effects. They also talk about the evolution of text-to-speech technology and the emergence of Chat GPT, which can mimic human voices flawlessly. The speaker predicts that a hybrid approach combining human and AI voices will be the future of the industry, and mentions having a voice clone built based on their own voice.
• Emotional metrics and speech synthesis: Allison discusses the use of bots to analyze emotional metrics in callers' voices to measure urgency in crisis situations, and the possibility of measuring fertility by analyzing the sound of women's voices. 

Timestamps

[00:00:00] TV job led to tanning salon recording.

[00:06:22] Text-to-speech technology advances the alarm voiceover industry.

[00:10:14] Recording Cepstral speech from script fragments.

[00:14:10] Technology measures emotion and fertility in voice.

[00:17:48] Tech-created better voices, from parametric to concatenative.

[00:22:17] Synthetic voices used in the entertainment localization industry.

[00:24:25] Detecting truth and lies is difficult.

Quotes

• The Trend in AI Voices: "They [AI developers] want to be very conversational... they want it to sound that casual and that conversational."

• The Future of Emotion Detection: "I was really, absolutely blown away by some of the things that they can do. For example, there was one speaker that was talking about if somebody were to call into a crisis line, and they would have Bots that would actually gauge exactly how urgent their request is just by measuring the metrics of their emotion in their voice, which is astounding."

Connect with Allison

LinkedIn -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonsmith3/ 

Website - https://www.theivrvoice.com/ 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/voicegal 

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Human Development and Family Sciences from The University of Texas and over a decade of experience building programs, products, and services to improve the lives of individuals and families. 

Her experience as a foster mom and daily life as an adoptive mom to two young children inspires and influences her work developing Lucero. She generally enjoys working on big ideas that push the boundaries of what has been done before to maximize positive social outcomes. 

Jilian also believes that we can find better ways to balance purpose with profit and that if the right technologies, people, ideas, and business models come together -- we can, and will change the world for the better.

Key Takeaways

• We discuss the idea behind the creation of Lucero, and how Jilian and her team at Lucero help the youth in becoming more self-aware of their feelings and emotions
• Creating great conversations between tweens and adults via game-based activities
• How Jilian is working alongside experienced, creative game creators and therapists to ensure they’re able to impact as many framilies (any combination of youth and adults who want to radically support each other) as possible
• The massive milestone Jilian hopes to cover, and how voice-to-text technology can help Lucero in ensuring faster and more effective communication between little kids and wellness tech

Connect with Jilian

Website - https://lucerospeaks.com/ 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillian-domingue/ 

Itay did his Ph.D. in Physics and Neuroscience and has over 20 years of experience in inventing and developing cutting-edge technologies. As a researcher, developer, and founder at a variety of startup companies in different sectors such as optics and renewable energy, Itay has an extensive background in leading multidisciplinary technological teams from an idea stage up to a working product.

Interested in the idea that cognitive monitoring can improve healthcare systems and enhance diagnostics and care, he leads the technical efforts at MyndYou.

Key Takeaways

• Itay describes the idea behind the creation of the AI-powered platform called MyEleanor, and how she works
• Who is Eleanor Intended for and what section of the population does she majorly check in on?
• Itay shares with us the kind of questions MyEleanor asks in order to help her collect data from verbal cues in order to detect deteriorating health.
• Success stories of patients who have built a great relationship with MyEleanor
• With the health system in the US incentivizing to reduce readmission rates, we discuss why MyEleanor would be an effective way of significantly reducing patient readmissions and freeing up hospital resources for those who really need them
• Who benefits more from an Eleanor call; is it the patient, is it the care nurses, is it the health system or does ensure success for all of them?   
• How widespread is MyEleanor and how can someone in need can get access to the product 

Connect with Itay

Website - https://myndyou.com/ 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/itaybaruchi/ 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/MyndYou_ 

Born in Florida, Sat, at the young age of 19, dived into entrepreneurship and has since then, never looked back. 10 years later he holds a passion to help future innovators become more efficient in the growth of their businesses.

An innovator, Sat has built businesses around software development, call centers, marketing agencies, web services DIY tech, and has also mentored many startups across different incubators and accelerators in the U.S

Key Takeaways

•  Sat breaks down the idea behind the Maya AI. What she is, how she works, and what she can do
• We explore the vastness of the data pool that Maya is able to tap into
• The parameters that help Maya with the compilation, storage, and retrieval of data in order to build knowledge from reliable sources.
• Maya’s perspective creates comfort and trusts between her and the user, which ultimately means one person per Maya
• The guard rails and security mechanisms have been employed to make sure Maya has manners and doesn't go off the walls 
• Discovering the industries that are most suitable to apply Maya into their system

Connect with Sat

Website - https://meetmaya.world/ 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/satramphal/ 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/sat_ramphal 

Michaell’s main goal in life is to find more of himself and considers his artistic explorations as a vehicle for self-awareness. 

He tries to live life at his best, and his current goal lies in discovering how humans and systems interact in everyday life. 

Listen in to hear more from Michaell. 

Key Takeaways

• Michael dives into some of the challenges he experienced growing up as a dysgraphic kid
• How voice technology has, over the years, helped Michael adapt to society's norms
• The tools and systems Michael has creatively made use of in order to write his five books
• Exploring the limitless power of the human mind
• How being more aware can lead to the discovery of opportunities in the most basic of environments

Connect with Michaell

Website -  https://michaellm.com/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/michaellstateofart/ 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaellart 

Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/michaellart1/ 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thesmartofart/ 

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVoYLf4psWlWvtBYPksHAIw

In 2015 Nick created Security Fanatics, a Cybersecurity/Cyberwarfare outfit dedicated to designing custom Cyberdefense strategies for medium to enterprise corporations. 

An expert in cybersecurity and network infrastructure, Nick has consulted with clients ranging from small business owners up to Fortune 100-level companies. He has designed, built, and implemented multinational networks, encryption systems, and multi-tiered infrastructures as well as small business environments. 

He is also passionate about emerging technology and enjoys creating, breaking, and fixing test environments.

Award-winning co-author of the bestselling cybersecurity book "Easy Prey," TEDx Speaker, and host of The Deep Dive nationally syndicated radio show on various stations, Nick is known as an industry thought leader and sought after for his advice on the future of technology and how it will impact every day businesses and consumers. 

Key Takeaways

• Nicks's opinion on whether or not people are cautious enough when it comes to digital protection
• How different innovations in technology have led to more threats in the cybersecurity space
• The many functions that voice technology serves in ensuring cybersecurity 
• The importance of understanding the risks posed by different applications and computer software that you use every day
• Easy-to-implement tips on how you can protect yourself from digital attacks
• Nick's personal opinion on password managers
• What’s Nick’s wish in terms of technology advancements?

Connect with Nick

Website - http://www.securityfanatics.com/ 

Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickespinosa/ 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/NickAEsp

At MiiCare, the digital health coach and companion, Monica, is the key product that John and his team work on.

Monica provides holistic care for seniors by powering their homes with AI-driven technology that can detect, predict, and prevent health conditions before they arise. 

With the ever-increasing demand and stress placed on the healthcare system, MiiCare allows healthcare professionals to prioritize care requirements more effectively and support older adults’ adherence to their wellness plans. 

Tune into today’s episode and find out how Monica has proven to be a proactive companion who can engage socially to prevent loneliness and promote healthy habits and behaviors. 

Key Takeaways

• John walks us through some of the functions Monica plays in the support of older adults to live a more healthy and happier life
• How Monica is able to interact with patients, alongside the major roles and capabilities that she executes as a friendly digital health coach
• Monica’s way of making herself at home when she’s in a new environment
• Friend, Coach, and Medical advisor. John discusses with us some of the roles and responsibilities that Monica carries out, which make her stand out from similar digital assistants in the industry
• What makes it possible for Monica to be able to personalize to the user's requirements? 
• How John and the rest of his team at MiiCare work to make sure that the user's information is private and protected
• Why Monica and the MiiCare system is based on the aging population; also, are there plans to take Monica to everyone?
• The one Technology that John wishes was available now

Connect with John

Website -  https://www.miicare.co.uk/   

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmwall/  

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/johnmwall/?hl=en 

Daniel Zheng is on a mission to preserve Eastern Min with the help of speech technology. Despite having about 10 million speakers, the language is in danger of extinction in a generation or two, and Daniel is on a mission to reverse that. He founded ZFC to help with education and technology in support of Eastern Min preservation.

And before you ask, here's the recipe for...

Mom's Carrot Cookies

Ingredients:

• 3/4 C (170 g) shortening
• 3/4 C (150 g) sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract
• 1 C (240 ml) cooked, mashed, cooled carrots
• 2 C (240 g) white flour
• 2 teaspoons (10ml) salt
• 1/2 C (120 ml) chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)

Icing:

• 1 box (450 g) powdered sugar
• The rind of 1 orange, zested
• The juice of 1 orange

Directions:

• Heat oven to 350°F (175 C).
• Cream together sugar and shortening.
• Add egg, vanilla, and carrots & mix.
• Add dry ingredients & mix.
• Bake at 350°F (175 C) for 10 to 12 minutes.
• Frost with icing

Let us know if you try them!

In this episode, Ken talks with Darin & Jeff about the challenges of understanding speech in real-world environments.

In this episode, he talks with Darin and Jeff about Pryon's enterprise AI technology, and about tech in general.

Maryam Nabavi is a mother, and a strategic Leader with 10+ yrs of experience in product innovation & consumer electronics.

Carla Margalef Bentabol has deep experience in software development, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing.

On this episode of The Voice Box, Maryam and Carla describe their vision to Darin and Jeff.

Miguel Jetté has been leading Rev's speech technology team for 5 years and has fascinating insights into the melding of human and computer resources to increase accuracy and productivity of speech transcription.

Xavier has a reputation in the speech industry to be reckoned with. He has over 20 years of experience in speech and signal processing technologies, has published over 100 peer-reviewed research papers, and holds multiple patents in the areas of multimedia, machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence.

SmartOR is giving voice to a completely end to end smart home. From lighting to streaming services, they are giving users control without sacrificing privacy.

In the hospital OR space, they are using voice to assist with arthroscopic surgery. In the OR of the future. The surgeon will be able to control everything by voice.

Will the voice controls of the future always require a web connection, and the transfer of your speech and data to the cloud?

In this episode, we explore some of the cases where the human touch is necessary, and when it might make sense to apply a hybrid human+computer approach to transcription, and we discuss some of the challenges computers will need to overcome to reach parity.

Have you ever been in a Zoom meeting (or any meeting) that went off the rails, or that was dominated by one person? Riff is helping to fix that problem through their tools that use AI to measure and augment human interactions, helping people and organizations communicate, collaborate, and innovate better.

Don has spent over 30 years in the healthcare and informatics space. Prior to Clarigent Health, he led Assurex Health, which grew to over 500 employees and was acquired in 2016 by Myriad Genetics for $225 million. When Don left Assurex after the transition period, he wanted to continue working in the mental health field, and to build another company that helped people.

Lack of funding and other factors including stigma have caused mental health to lag behind other areas of medical practice when it comes to integrating technology and science. In 2018, he established Clarigent Health with the goal of bringing science to mental health. The core technology builds on foundational research conducted at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center led by Dr. John Pestian and Dr. Tracy Glauser. Don’s co-founder, Bill Haynes had previously worked with Don, John and Tracy during the Assurex days, including Assurex sponsoring some of the research that now constitutes the core technology at Clarigent.

Although Don has worked in and advocated for mental healthcare for a long time, three years ago this purpose became more deeply personal. His son Justin died by suicide just as Clarigent was developing the commercial version of the suicide prevention technology. The memory of Justin’s life has made this suicide prevention work a more personal mission for Don and the entire team.

Darin and Jeff are honored to have Don on The Voice Box, and Cobalt Speech is happy to support Clarigent with speech technology.

Shyamala is a leading figure in the field of voice interfaces. See her web site here, including links to her books and publications.

Apologies to both Shyamala and our listeners: This was the first interview we recorded for The Voice Box, and we had some troubles with the audio. This is a great listen, with important content, but we admit the sound quality is less than perfect.

Listen in on this episode as Jeff & Darin talk to Bruce about his vision for a future where consumers will have greater clarity, confidence, and transparency about the origin and processing of the food they eat.

Ear-Reality is a market leader in interactive audio stories for voice. As an agency, they offer services for companies and brands. As a publisher they create and publish our own interactive stories.

Ear-Reality's TWIST (The Wonderful Interactive Storytelling Tool) allows writers and content creators to create and publish interactive audio stories easily for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Samsung Bixby.

Dan talks with Jeff and Darin about the challenges of bringing language technology and resources to all the people of the world.

Also check out the Practical AI podcast, which Dan co-hosts.

This is a particularly interesting episode for our co-host Jeff Adams, who is also a co-founder at Canary Speech. Henry and Jeff have been friends for 35 years.

Interesting Links:

Check out this recent article highlighting Canary speech, and naming it among the 15 most promising startups.

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The Voice Box is sponsored by Cobalt Speech and Language, a leading provider of speech & language technology. Cobalt can help your company achieve its potential as well. Contact Cobalt at info@cobaltspeech.com

Instreamatic pioneered AI-driven voice advertising and is the leader in the voice ad tech space. Based on AI and deep learning, Instreamatic provides media companies and advertisers with a platform for interactive voice advertising. Instreamatic has established itself as an industry leader in the burgeoning field of Voice Advertising with Pandora, Salem Media, Gaana, Mindshare, Dentsu, Publicis and Hakuhodo being some of its clients. 

Interesting Links:

If you enjoyed listening to Stas, you can get more at his podcast, Voice AI in Marketing.

They also have an associated LinkedIn community.

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The Voice Box is sponsored by Cobalt Speech and Language, a leading provider of speech & language technology. Cobalt can help your company achieve its potential as well. Contact Cobalt at info@cobaltspeech.com

With FluentWorlds' language learning app, students can learn to speak English by immersing themselves in a virtual world where they interact with native English speakers. The app's Perfect Pronunciation tool gives users immediate feedback on how well they are pronouncing the words they are learning.

Interesting Links:

www.fluentworlds.com

Fluentworlds Academy: https://academy.fluentworlds.com/

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The Voice Box is sponsored by Cobalt Speech and Language, a leading provider of speech & language technology. Cobalt can help your company achieve its potential as well. Contact Cobalt at info@cobaltspeech.com

John has a PhD in speech processing from Trinity College Dublin, which focused on developing novel techniques for analyzing voice quality. At Cogito, he runs the machine learning department.

Please visit the Cogito engineering blog to learn more about the technology we discuss in today's episode.

The Voice Box is sponsored by Cobalt Speech and Language, premier providers of speech technology to hundreds of companies large and small. Contact us.