Two Voice Devs

Amazon has made some changes to the Alexa Presentation Language, dubbing this version 2023.2, and Allen is a bit confused about what these updates bring. Mark, however, clarifies what's new, how it relates to what was previously available, and why some users can benefit from this latest APL release.

One of the neat features we've seen come out of the #GenerativeAI and #ConversationalAI explosion recently has been the attention being paid to text embeddings and how they can be used to radically change how we index and search for things. Allen, however, has recently been working with an image embedding model from Google, including incorporating it into LangChain JS. Mark asks about what that process was like, what this new model lets us do, and starts to explore some of the potential of this new tool that is available for everyone.

References:

Three years of Two Voice Devs! There's no doubt that the #VoiceFirst industry has changed over that time, with the rise of #GenerativeAI and #ConversationalAI taking the world by storm. Mark and Allen look back at how the show has evolved over this time, and why we hope you'll be joining us as we continue forward on our journey!

Guest Host Xavier Portilla returns to chat with Allen about some of the latest additions to Dialogflow CX. New system functions make some of the processing you can do on inputs easier and faster, while prebuilt flows and flow scoped parameters make it easier to have clearly defined, and reusable, components in your conversation design.

More info:

Guest host Xavier Portilla joins Allen to take a look at a new slot type that the Alexa team has in public beta. How can this new type be used? How does it differ from previous slot types? And what is a slot type anyway?

Guest Host Leslie Pound joins Allen to discuss her perspective on software development and #GenerativeAI and how, rather than trying to translate our fuzzy side, developers should think about how it helps us be more aware of how users are seeking to be more inspired or creative.

Noble Ackerson returns to discuss about a recent presentation that Allen made to the Google Developer Group NYC chapter where he illustrates how #GenerativeAI can be used as a bridge between the discrete nature of computers and the "fuzzy" nature of humans. He and Noble discuss how Large Language Models, such as OpenAI and Google's PaLM 2, along with libraries like LangChain become a powerful tool in every developer's toolbox.

Allen is joined by Noble Ackerson to discuss the latest feature that OpenAI has included with it's GPT models. Functions provide a well defined way for developers to turn unstructured human input to a more structured format that can be processed by your code or using a library such as LangChain. We take a look at both how they can be used, but some of the open questions that remain about their use.

More info:

- https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/gpt/function-calling

This week, Google completed the "sunset" of Conversational Actions for the Google Assistant. Mark and Allen discuss the ups and downs of Actions on Google, how it fit into the #VoiceFirst landscape, and what may come next.

Another milestone episode! Mark and Allen take advantage of the event to look back at our predictions from episode 100, look back at how #VoiceFirst development has changed over the past 50 episodes (and several years), and look forward to what we'll be talking about in the next 50 episodes.