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Reasonably Accurate 馃馃 Transcript
Morning builders, it's Mark here. Um Hopefully, you know the routine, you got your coffee, you can get your tea. Um We're ready for mornings with Mark. This is episode six. Thanks for sticking with me last week, still working out some of the technical um issues uh doing it here.
Prerecords. Um Mainly because of the long weekend, some stuff shuffled around on my schedule and I'm not sure whether it's better to be purely live or to be more consistent with the time. So let me know in the comments below about what you think. Um So this is recorded live in front of the studio audience.
I think one of my cats counts as a studio audience. Um So we'll see. Uh but let me know what you think live or pre-recorded. Ok. Though, I want to be doing this live more often than not, but every once in a while life kind of gets in the way.
So what I want to talk about today um was voice. Um So let me refresh mine with a little bit of tea. It's still screaming hot, so not so refreshing. Um But delicious nonetheless. Uh So I was reading a great article um Today uh In Wired um about um some concrete examples of why voice is um getting more uptake than we all kind of expect.
Um So through podcasts, through smart speakers, um through audio books, um it's really taking over and I think there's a really easy explanation that a lot of people kind of overlook. That's because as well as much as the written word is lovely and uh it's uh really effective.
Um It is really hard to communicate complex idea, uh complex ideas at a low enough comprehension level to reach a mass audience where you can uh convey more complex information via voice or via video here live or recorded. Um because you're getting more clues, right? So if you're simply reading the words that I've written on medium, then you're adding your own um inflection, your own emotion, your own understanding on how I've constructed my sentences and, and the language I've used and maybe that's effective, maybe not, I'm not the greatest of writers.
So it's probably not as effective as it could be. Whereas if I'm reading that to you via podcast or an audio book, now, you understand where I'm putting emphasis on the tone because you're literally hearing it. Whereas if we go all the way to video, you're also getting additional things like facial expression, body language, you're getting the rest of that communication.
So it's a richer and richer medium, which means you can um uh deliver more and more complicated concepts um at a uh more accessible audience or a broader audience. And I think that's really, really fascinating when it comes back to building things. A lot of the questions I get asked around voice are, you know, is it secure?
What are the privacy concerns? And yeah, there's a lot of stuff that just hasn't been worked out yet. Um So, you know, you can dive into the Aws cloud and you can fire things like Lex which powers Alexa. Um You can do things like Polly which lets us speak back to you.
You can make a really convincing and compelling chatbot. Um Are there privacy concerns? There depends on the data you're do you're using. Um There's always privacy concerns with everything. The biggest challenge around voice right now is authentication, whether or not um my uh voice tools know it's me.
Do they know it's me versus you so easy way to do that is, you know, walk into anybody's house and say, hey, Alexa, um Alexa is gonna respond and if that's wired up to different things like heating or um uh IOT systems or if it's uh wired up to ordering, there's potential issues there, um They're not insurmountable and I think the advantages far outweigh any concerns, but that's what I'm kind of diving into today.
I'm looking at that kind of um uh implications. What are the privacy challenges and that's gonna tie into um some of the um operational technologies that I'm talking about at things uh places like South by Southwest, which I'll put a link to down below where I'm talking about rogue robots and I think voice um has a big play there um as well as just general how we interact with our technology.
Um Lots of crazy stuff to think about and it's only Tuesday. So hopefully you guys had a great weekend. Hopefully, this has sparked some interesting thoughts for you. Always looking to um interact, uh looking to have a conversation. Let me know in the comments below or online.
I'm marknca. Have a great day.
