Voice Tech Podcast

Voice Tech Podcast

By Carl RobinsonTechnology
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Voice Tech Podcast episodes

  • Deaf Person Calling - Benjamin Etienne, Rogervoice

    Benjamin Etienne is a data scientist at Rogervoice, a mobile app that allows deaf and hard-of-hearing people to use the telephone. Ben shares his inspirational story about how he taught himself data science and machine learning in the evenings, so he could work in a more technical role. He tells us why he's not keen on Kaggle competitions, and why getting a job in data science is the best way to master it.

    Ben introduces us to the challenges faced by the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, and how they can overcome them with the help of voice technology. We cover how Rogervoice works from both functional and technical standpoints, and discuss the pros and cons of using a commercial cloud-based speech API versus developing a custom in-house speech-to-text system. Ben reveals his reasoning behind his choice of machine learning models, and describes the advantages of using connectionist temporal classification (CTC).

    We then discuss the state of data science today, the limitations of current models and data preprocessing techniques, and how an understanding of the underlying psychology and neurology of users can help us design more effective voice technologies.

    Links from this episode:

    • Rogervoice: https://www.rogervoice.com 
    • CTC intro: https://distill.pub/2017/ctc/ 
    • CTC article on Medium: https://gab41.lab41.org/speech-recognition-you-down-with-ctc-8d3b558943f0 
    • ...more show notes on the Website : http://bit.ly/voicetechpodcast

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    1 hr 8 min
  • #006 - Deaf Person Calling - Benjamin Etienne, Rogervoice
    In this episode I talk with data scientist Benjamin Etienne of Rogervoice, an innovative voice technology company that helps deaf and hard-of-hearing people to use the telephone. Ben shares his inspirational story about how he taught himself data science, then we delve into speech-to-text, machine learning for audio, and how our brain waves synchonise with the voices of others.
    1 hr 8 min
  • The Art of Sound in Motion - Greg Beller, IRCAM

    Greg Beller is the Head of the Interfaces Research and Creation team the leading audio research laboratory IRCAM in France. He is also the founder of SYNEKINE, a live entertainment company which mixes art and science in the spirit of research. 

    We explore the relationship between sound and physical space, and the link between our voices and our gestures. Greg explains what prosody is and its importance in speech and communication. He then demonstrates a number of technological art installations that can modulate the prosody of our speech to augment our capabilities. In the future, this technology will help us to build greater rapport and emotional connection with other humans and voice assistants.
     

    Greg is a fascinating guest, who shows us how explorations into new forms of artistic expression can lead to new technologies for use in our daily lives. 

    Links from the show:

    • Greg's website: http://www.gregbeller.com
    • Synekine website: https://synekine.com/
    • Greg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/greg_beller
    • Greg's TedX talk: https://youtu.be/5BQJIFaRDsg
    • Elliptic Labs: http://www.ellipticlabs.com/
    • Eyesight Tech: http://www.eyesight-tech.com/
    • Neatebox / Welcome app: https://www.neatebox.com/

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    1 hr 14 min
  • Building Knight Rider's KITT - Charles Cadbury, Champers Advisory

    In this episode I talk with Charles Cadbury, owner of the London-based technology consultancy, Champers Advisory, about his experience building voice applications, and the fascinating future of voice technology. He was great fun to talk to, and had plenty of surprising facts and interesting stories to share. You're going to really enjoy listening to this episode! 

    Charles has built or consulted on over 350 digital products for his clients over the years, covering web, social, mobile, and and now Voice. He has most recently worked with Lola.tech, helping them to create Dazzle.ai, a product that enables personalised digital conversations between travel customers and travel providers across voice and text channels. 

    Charles shares his extensive knowledge and experience on a wide range of topics related to voice. We cover the challenges when working with client data, how payment transactions can and will be handled over voice, and how voice assistants will change the landscape of consumer sales and marketing, and much more. 

    Links from the show:

    • Champers Advisory Consultancy https://champersadvisory.com 
    • Charles Cadbury Personal Site https://charlescadbury.com 
    • Charles Cadbury on Twitter https://twitter.com/CharlesCadbury 
    • Dazzle.ai Voice Platform https://www.dazzle.ai/ 
    • Lola.tech https://www.lola.tech/ 

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    1 hr
  • Vivatech 2018 Voice Startup Summary

    This episode covers 8 of the most interesting voice startups that I found at the Vivatech technology conference in Paris, France. 


    Included in this episode is a voice transcription and synthesis mobile app for the hard of hearing, a voice enabled smart alarm clock that can monitor your sleep quality, a robot behaviour system that delivers CMS content in person, and a comprehensive voice assistant platform that can handle multiple requests in a single query. 

    Links from the show:

    • Rogervoice mobile app: http://rogervoice.com 
    • Ideta voice assistant platform: http://meet-ideta.com/ 
    • Holi / Bonjour alarm clock: http://holi.io/ 
    • Askhub analytics: https://www.askhub.io/ 
    • Acapela group speech synthesis: http://www.acapela-group.com/ 
    • Humanizing technologies: http://humanizing.com/ 
    • Cochlear.ai acoustic event detection: http://cochlear.ai 
    • Soundhound Houndify voice assistant platform: https://www.houndify.com/ 

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    27 min
  • Voice AI for eCommerce - John Fitzpatrick, Voysis

    John Fitzpatrick is the VP of Product & Engineering at Voysis, a leading voice technology company that builds custom Voice AI solutions for businesses. They are currently focused on the ecommerce vertical, helping to voice-enable mobile apps and websites to augment the shopping experience. 

    In our conversation we cover a range of topics including the major components of the Voysis system, the technologies and tools John's team used to build it, and the challenges they faced. We also discuss how Voysis protects a user's privacy and the implications of the GDPR regulation that comes into force soon. 

    It was a pleasure to talk with John and learn from such an experienced engineer. Whether you're currently building voice AI systems or are just interested in learning about how they work, this episode will have plenty for you. 

    Links from the show:

    • Voysis: https://voysis.com/ 
    • EESEN project: https://github.com/srvk/eesen 
    • Kaldi toolkit: http://kaldi-asr.org/doc/about.html 
    • Open FST library: http://openfst.org/twiki/bin/view/FST/WebHome 
    • Spacy NLP toolkit: https://spacy.io/ 
    • Kubernetes containerized application management: https://kubernetes.io/ 
    • Luigi batch process automation: https://github.com/spotify/luigi 
    • Oxford Deep NLP course (from deepmind team): https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/teaching/courses/2016-2017/dl/

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    53 min

About Voice Tech Podcast

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Interviews with voice technology professionals, boosting your knowledge and technical skills. Voice interfaces, voice assistants, data science, machine learning and much more. Hosted by Carl Robinson.…