Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio, and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you here? We are on a Friday again. That
Speaker 1: means it's time for a classic episode. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published on June fifteenth, twenty sixteen. It is called AI
Speaker 1: Assistants and You. This is clearly an episode that could
Speaker 1: use an update now twenty sixteen. Man boy, We've got
Speaker 1: a lot more to say about AI assistants these days,
Speaker 1: but I'll leave that for the autro. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2: So we want to talk today. We being me and you.
Speaker 2: You can talk back.
Speaker 1: I just won't be able to hear you about these
Speaker 1: personal digital assistants, but not the pen of the past.
Speaker 1: We want to talk about the series and the quirtanas
Speaker 1: and the Google assistants and things of that nature. And
Speaker 1: I want to specifically look into how are these going
Speaker 1: to be incorporated into our lives in the future, and
Speaker 1: what are some of the concerns we have and what
Speaker 1: differentiates all these products that have been sort of coming
Speaker 1: into their own.
Speaker 2: Over the past few years.
Speaker 1: So to start with you might say, well, you know
Speaker 1: which of these assistants came first, And arguably you could
Speaker 1: say Google actually beat everyone to the punch by a
Speaker 1: couple of months because on June fourteenth, twenty eleven, Google
Speaker 1: announced at an inside Google Search event that it was
Speaker 1: going to roll out voice search on Google dot com.
Speaker 2: And the project name at Google was.
Speaker 1: Majel or Magel, depending upon how you want to pronounce it,
Speaker 1: but Majel would be the way her name was actually pronounced.
Speaker 1: Named after Majel Barrett, who was the wife of Gene Roddenberry,
Speaker 1: the creator of Star Trek. Major Barrett actually played the
Speaker 1: voice of the computer system, particularly on Star Trek the
Speaker 1: next generation. Whenever you heard the computer speak, that was
Speaker 1: Majel Barrett's voice. She also played Deanna Troy's mother, Luaxana Troy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they named it after her. Internally, it actually doesn't have
Speaker 1: a name name, which kind of sets it apart from
Speaker 1: some of the competitors. So the Voice Command project was
Speaker 1: a tool from Google Labs, so their research and development
Speaker 1: arm and on March twenty fourth, twenty fourteen, this particular
Speaker 1: feature was rolled into the Google Now product and it
Speaker 1: was part of the Android four point one release.
Speaker 2: That was the jelly Bean release.
Speaker 1: Now, at that point, the speech recognition commands had evolved
Speaker 1: a little bit. It had gone beyond some of the
Speaker 1: initial stuff where you could just ask Google to search
Speaker 1: something for you. This was also a feature that was
Speaker 1: worked into Google Glass, so if you had a pair
Speaker 1: of Google Glass, you know that the voice command would
Speaker 1: always start with the phrase okay, followed by Google I'm
Speaker 1: not going to say it together, just in case some
Speaker 1: of you are listening to your devices or listening with
Speaker 1: a device nearby and it's on its home screen, I
Speaker 1: don't want to activate it for whatever reason, but you
Speaker 1: could use that phrase that would end up alerting the
Speaker 1: virtual assistant that you wanted something, and then you would
Speaker 1: speak whatever it was you wanted. And over time functionality increase,
Speaker 1: so it went beyond just searches and into more interactive
Speaker 1: features like with an Android phone, you could set an alarm,
Speaker 1: or you could set a reminder or review your calendar
Speaker 1: and more as time went on. At this point it
Speaker 1: has evolved into something a little bit more robust than that.
Speaker 1: Even you can start to interact with some third party
Speaker 1: stuff as well, and at Google Io twenty sixteen it
Speaker 1: became part of Google Assistant. Now Google Assistant is really
Speaker 1: the intelligent personal assistant product from Google.
Speaker 2: The earlier versions.
Speaker 1: You could think of as sort of a rudimentary form
Speaker 1: or perhaps a prototype, or maybe just like these are
Speaker 1: features that would eventually be rolled all into one finished product,
Speaker 1: being Google Assistant. So by that argument, if you say
Speaker 1: Google Assistant, you know, if you mark the Google Io
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen event as its premiere, then it's not the oldest,
Speaker 1: but it dates back to June fourteenth, twenty eleven, when
Speaker 1: Google announced this initial search voice search ability. So that
Speaker 1: same year, in October, on October fourteenth, in fact, Apple
Speaker 1: introduced Siri.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure you all know what.
Speaker 1: Siri is, but just in case you don't, it's billed
Speaker 1: as an intelligent personal assistant and it was introduced as
Speaker 1: a feature with the iPhone four S and it's been
Speaker 1: part of the iPhone iOS ecosystem ever since. Use a
Speaker 1: speech recognition to interpret user requests and responds with what
Speaker 1: is hopefully inappropriate action. According to series creators, Apple actually
Speaker 1: scaled back what Siri was supposed to be able to do.
Speaker 1: They said that they had arranged for Siri to work
Speaker 1: with about forty to forty five different apps that Apple had,
Speaker 1: and then the company scaled that back significantly, so the
Speaker 1: Siri creators essentially sold the product to Apple. Then they
Speaker 1: went on to create a different intelligent assistant called VIV
Speaker 1: VIV and VIV is currently unaffiliated with any other big names,
Speaker 1: but it has received funding from some very wealthy folks
Speaker 1: in the text sphere, like Mark Zuckerberg, for example. And
Speaker 1: VIV is what the creators of VIV say that it's
Speaker 1: what Siri was supposed to be from the get go,
Speaker 1: and essentially they're saying that Siri was kind of hampered, hamstrung,
Speaker 1: if you will, by Apple, and we'll get into more
Speaker 1: about why that may be in a little bit.
Speaker 2: So Siri actually came.
Speaker 1: Second after Google had announced their voice search, keeping in
Speaker 1: mind that Siri was a different presentation, So you could
Speaker 1: argue that Siri was really more of the first assistant,
Speaker 1: and that the Google approach eventually evolved into an assistant,
Speaker 1: but wasn't really at that same level back in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: Moving forward in spring twenty fourteen, that's when Microsoft got
Speaker 1: into the game by unveiling Kortana, which is their intelligent
Speaker 1: assistant for the Windows phone platform, and in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Microsoft included Kortana with Windows ten, So if you have
Speaker 1: a Windows ten machine, Kuortana.
Speaker 2: Is part of that.
Speaker 1: And if you have a microphone you can actually give
Speaker 1: voice commands to Kortana. You can also interact via text.
Speaker 1: Kortana is named after the AI and the Halo franchise
Speaker 1: and is voiced by the same actress who provided the
Speaker 1: voice of Kortana in the games. So you can ask
Speaker 1: fun things about Master Chief and she always has a
Speaker 1: interesting answer for the All of these, by the way,
Speaker 1: tend to have some sort of fun element to them,
Speaker 1: where the developers clearly thought of ridiculous things you could
Speaker 1: ask the digital assistance and built in responses that were humorous.
Speaker 2: For example, the.
Speaker 1: Big one that everyone talked about with Siri was where
Speaker 1: can I hide a body? And Siri would come back
Speaker 1: with nearby quarries and cave.
Speaker 2: Systems and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: Now, in November twenty fourteen, we get our final big
Speaker 1: name in this battle, Amazon. That's when Amazon unveiled the Echo,
Speaker 1: which is that sort of standalone speaker system that has
Speaker 1: the intelligent assistant Alexa incorporated into it, and like the
Speaker 1: other ones, I've mentioned so far, Alexa can follow your
Speaker 1: voice commands and interact with the Internet as well as
Speaker 1: with other Internet connected devices. That list of Internet connected
Speaker 1: devices Alexa can work with is growing day by day,
Speaker 1: and Amazon's actually trying to build out the capabilities further
Speaker 1: and as such as hired a team to create a
Speaker 1: guide on how to develop for Alexa. I'm going to
Speaker 1: interview one of the developers on that team in a
Speaker 1: later episode. We actually have that scheduled for later this summer,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk more about what it's like to develop
Speaker 1: for this platform and the potential of using such a
Speaker 1: platform in new and creative ways. So we have four
Speaker 1: really big players in the space. We've got Apple and
Speaker 1: Google and Microsoft and Amazon already vuying to be the
Speaker 1: big digital assistant provider. Then we have the other names,
Speaker 1: like we've got the team behind viv and other apps
Speaker 1: as well that are in this space that are trying
Speaker 1: to kind of become the voice that you interact with
Speaker 1: so that it can do all the things you needed
Speaker 1: to do in a as seamless a way as possible.
Speaker 1: So one of the things we need to also look
Speaker 1: at is how does this differentiate, How do these different players.
Speaker 1: How are they different from one another? If they're exactly
Speaker 1: the same as each other, then it really doesn't matter
Speaker 1: which one you pick, right, I mean, it kind of
Speaker 1: depends just which platform.
Speaker 2: You have available.
Speaker 1: If you have all iOS devices, then Siri is pretty
Speaker 1: much going to be the one you're going to depend
Speaker 1: upon the most, most likely at any rate. So Cortana, Siri,
Speaker 1: and Google Assistant are all part of existing platforms like
Speaker 1: smartphones and computers, So they are incorporated into things that
Speaker 1: we already have. You you probably already have a smartphone
Speaker 1: or a computer or both, and so it makes sense
Speaker 1: that you would incorporate your digital assistant into that. You
Speaker 1: don't have to buy anything else, it's right there, and
Speaker 1: you can incorporate that into other systems that are connected
Speaker 1: to a personal network or a home network. Then you've
Speaker 1: got Alexa, which debuted on a standalone device called the Echo,
Speaker 1: which again is just this sort of intelligent speaker, a
Speaker 1: smart speaker with a built in microphone. Google Assistant is
Speaker 1: actually following suit with that with Google Home that was
Speaker 1: announced at Google Io twenty sixteen, and Google Home is
Speaker 1: also a smart speaker with a microphone that's going to
Speaker 1: be available sometime later in twenty sixteen, and as of
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast, I don't have a date
Speaker 1: or a price on that, so it's hard to say
Speaker 1: whether or not it will be competitively priced against the
Speaker 1: Amazon Echo.
Speaker 2: It does look like it's going.
Speaker 1: To be a particularly powerful version of this personal assistant,
Speaker 1: And there are also rumors emerging that Apple is also
Speaker 1: working on Seri hardware, so it'd be another standalone speaker
Speaker 1: microphone system of some sort, and that Apple's Seri platform
Speaker 1: would exist on that. Now, as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast, we don't have confirmation on that, so there's
Speaker 1: no timetable associated with such a thing or a price.
Speaker 1: I would expect that any announce of such a device
Speaker 1: would come at one of Apple's big events, So probably,
Speaker 1: if I had the guess, I'd say September twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: is when they would announce it. That's typically when they
Speaker 1: announced all the big iPhone changes. But that's just a guess.
Speaker 1: They might hold a single event for this particular thing,
Speaker 1: or they might not hold an event at all. They
Speaker 1: may just release it. That doesn't seem particularly Apple like,
Speaker 1: but it's a possibility. So what's the big deal with
Speaker 1: this technology? In the first place, why should we care. Well,
Speaker 1: For one thing, it represents huge leaps forward in the
Speaker 1: field of artificial intelligence. So in one way, it's a
Speaker 1: really cool glimpse at the state of the art in AI,
Speaker 1: specifically in stuff like speech recognition, which is pretty hard stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all have different ways of pronouncing words,
Speaker 1: and depending upon your region, you might have an accent
Speaker 1: that has a different way of pronouncing word. For example,
Speaker 1: you know the Brits say aluminium and we say aluminum
Speaker 1: here in the United States. Then even within a single country,
Speaker 1: you have different ways of pronouncing things. And when Google
Speaker 1: first began translating speech to text in voice messages, I
Speaker 1: noticed that it was having a real hard time interpreting
Speaker 1: the words of some of my friends and family. Now
Speaker 1: keep in mind I am in the Southeast United States Georgia,
Speaker 1: and that is we have a lot of people here.
Speaker 2: With Southern accents. I have a tiny bit of one.
Speaker 1: My parents have a slightly stronger Southern accent. Some of
Speaker 1: my extended relatives haven't even stronger Southern accent, and so
Speaker 1: when they would call and leave a voicemail, Google had
Speaker 1: to guess at what they were saying, and was not
Speaker 1: always correct. I would have to go and listen to
Speaker 1: the voicemail because the transcript would be completely indecipherable. Now,
Speaker 1: over time this has improved. The speech recognition software has improved,
Speaker 1: where it can adjust for things like different accents and
Speaker 1: the different ways that people speak, using a lot of
Speaker 1: different algorithms that have been based in machine learning to
Speaker 1: kind of get a grip on what is being said
Speaker 1: and even anticipate what the next thing will be in
Speaker 1: any line of thought. Obviously, for someone like me who
Speaker 1: stumbles over words occasionally, that's a real challenge because sometimes
Speaker 1: I don't even know what's next to come out of
Speaker 1: my mouth. But that's really where that power comes in. Now,
Speaker 1: over time, not just speech recognition has improved, we've also
Speaker 1: had to look at the problem of natural language. Now,
Speaker 1: natural language is how you and I communicate with one another.
Speaker 1: Unless it's like a really formal setting, we usually are
Speaker 1: pretty casual with our language, and we can make use
Speaker 1: of lots of different linguistic flourishes and tools, things like
Speaker 1: figures of speech, metaphors, similes, puns, references, and lots of
Speaker 1: other stuff that gives meaning to what we say. But
Speaker 1: only if the other person also understands what's going on.
Speaker 1: They also have to have that benefit, otherwise it just
Speaker 1: becomes a jumble of nonsense. I'm reminded of a Star
Speaker 1: Trek in the Next Generation episode where characters only spoke
Speaker 1: in allegory, and if you didn't have that cultural background,
Speaker 1: if you didn't understand the references, you didn't understand where
Speaker 1: the communic what the communication meant. Similar problem with machines.
Speaker 1: They don't necessarily know what we're saying all the time.
Speaker 1: A lot of machines are not very good at doing this.
Speaker 1: But natural language familiarity has been a huge challenge in
Speaker 1: an AI, and we're getting better at overcoming that challenge.
Speaker 1: So at that same IO event where Google announced Google Home,
Speaker 1: they demonstrate that you could start a conversation with your
Speaker 1: personal assistant asking something fairly specific, such as, we're going
Speaker 1: to go with a local reference for yours truly, how
Speaker 1: are the Atlanta Braves doing this season? Then the assistant
Speaker 1: would actually break your heart by telling you how poorly
Speaker 1: the Braves are doing this season and it is abysmal.
Speaker 1: And you could follow that up with when do they
Speaker 1: play at home next? And the assistant would understand that
Speaker 1: when you say they, you mean the Atlanta braves, and
Speaker 1: when you say at home, it would understand you meant Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: so it would be able to figure out the context
Speaker 1: of what you said without you having to restate when
Speaker 1: do the Atlanta braves play in Atlanta? Next, you could
Speaker 1: take these little linguistic shortcuts that we would normally do
Speaker 1: in natural conversation. But typically machines are not great at that.
Speaker 1: They don't have the capacity to understand how one sentence
Speaker 1: can follow another. But this is an example of how
Speaker 1: that's changed through machine learning. We'll be right back to
Speaker 1: talk more about AI assistance and you after this quick break.
Speaker 1: So you've got this new approach where you can continue
Speaker 1: a series of questions that build on previous questions and answers,
Speaker 1: and the Google Assistant can continue to give you relevant information,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty powerful statement in AI. Also, you
Speaker 1: might have heard that funny story that Google fed romance
Speaker 1: novels to its AI to make it better at understanding
Speaker 1: natural language, And to be fair, that's just part of
Speaker 1: the story. Google actually fed lots of different types of
Speaker 1: unpublished literature to its AI, all with the goal of
Speaker 1: teaching the AI that there are many different ways to
Speaker 1: say the same thing. So here's an example. I could
Speaker 1: say it's raining pretty hard today, or it's really coming
Speaker 1: down out there, or it's raining cats and dogs, or
Speaker 1: it's pouring outside, and all of those mean the same thing.
Speaker 1: But they're all different ways of saying that it's raining
Speaker 1: really hard. And there are a lot of other ways
Speaker 1: I could say the same you know, to express the
Speaker 1: same thought using different words.
Speaker 2: And that's a challenge for.
Speaker 1: Machines because we as humans understand that you can say
Speaker 1: all these different things and that all means the same thing.
Speaker 2: But machines have to be taught that.
Speaker 1: So romance novels, as it turns out, are a good
Speaker 1: way to teach an AI how to interpret different things
Speaker 1: because romance novels are incredibly formulaic. If you were to
Speaker 1: break down a romance novel and you outlined it seen
Speaker 1: by scene so that you understood where the beats and
Speaker 1: the story were, and who the characters were and their
Speaker 1: relationships to one another, you would see that a lot
Speaker 1: of romance novels follow the exact same structure, exact same
Speaker 1: plot structure, but because they're written by different people, because
Speaker 1: the character names and places are often changed from book
Speaker 1: to book, I mean, obviously you wouldn't want to write
Speaker 1: the same novel forty times. It means that you have
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways to express the same ideas.
Speaker 1: So if you feed a whole bunch of formulating novels
Speaker 1: into an AI to teach it humans have lots of
Speaker 1: different ways to express the same thoughts, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: powerful tool. And again, it wasn't the only type of
Speaker 1: story that was being fed to Google's AI. It's just
Speaker 1: the one that caught a lot of people's attention because
Speaker 1: it the headlines right themselves at that point. So one
Speaker 1: thing that is really, you know, funny about that is
Speaker 1: a lot of people made jokes about Google AI suggesting
Speaker 1: different ways to rip a bodice or to make a
Speaker 1: bosom heave from the whole romance novel thing. But as
Speaker 1: it turns, there was some real thought given to using
Speaker 1: this approach. Now, one of the way that these assistants
Speaker 1: work so well is to tap into information about you
Speaker 1: and to store all of that off of the hardware
Speaker 1: so that it can anticipate what you want and what
Speaker 1: you need and how to fulfill that. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if I'm using Amazon and I'm using the Echo and
Speaker 1: I'm using Alexa to purchase certain things off the Amazon Store.
Speaker 1: This ends up tapping into that algorithm that tells Amazon
Speaker 1: what I've bought and what I have browsed, and the
Speaker 1: sort of stuff I'm interested in, so it can suggest
Speaker 1: new things that I might be interested in but didn't
Speaker 1: know about.
Speaker 2: All of that is a very powerful tool.
Speaker 1: One of the exceptions here is Apple's SERI, So Apple
Speaker 1: pretty much locks everything down into the hardware as opposed
Speaker 1: to share it with third party or putting it in
Speaker 1: the cloud. That's because Apple's revenue source is selling that
Speaker 1: hardware and related services like support plans, like product support
Speaker 1: or protection plans for your hardware. That's how Apple makes
Speaker 1: its money. It's making it through selling this hardware that
Speaker 1: it is producing, as opposed to something like Google, which
Speaker 1: until Google Home comes out, it's selling an idea to
Speaker 1: you and then selling you to advertisers. So Apple benefits
Speaker 1: Apple in some ways because it means that you can
Speaker 1: trust Siri a little more than you could some of
Speaker 1: the other assistants because it's mostly contained to your device.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, it makes the actual service a
Speaker 1: little less useful because it cannot tap into the massive
Speaker 1: resources of the Internet the way some of these other
Speaker 1: assistants can, because again it's all pretty much contained to
Speaker 1: your device. Now I can access I can pull stuff
Speaker 1: from the Internet for you, but it's not as interactive as.
Speaker 2: Some of these other assistants are.
Speaker 1: Sore with the possibility of advertising or things like Google
Speaker 1: or Amazon rather Amazon's integrated shopping services, you start to
Speaker 1: see some real potential for revenue generation on the back end.
Speaker 1: But it also brings up some questions about privacy and security.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: To look into that matter further, I spoke with an
Speaker 1: expert on the subject, the founder of a company called
Speaker 1: big Id, Dimitri Serota, and here's what he.
Speaker 2: Had to say.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that clearly there's a certain degree of
Speaker 3: inevitability around this. I think we've moved from an age
Speaker 3: of having these technologies and you can almost think of
Speaker 3: this as kind of web dot dot one in terms
Speaker 3: of being responsive to the user and personalization really being
Speaker 3: about kind of targeting you. I think we're now shifting
Speaker 3: to an era of anticipation. You know, the technologies are
Speaker 3: becoming smarter and they know more about you because they
Speaker 3: touch you on so many levels, whether you're on the web,
Speaker 3: whether you're on your mobile, whether you're at the office,
Speaker 3: whether you're in the car, whether you're at home. As
Speaker 3: is the case with Google Home and Amazon Echo and
Speaker 3: similar technologies, that they're no longer just about kind of
Speaker 3: responding to a particular action. They're now trying to anticipate
Speaker 3: what you'd want. And in some degree, you know, they're
Speaker 3: becoming more like your mother or your parent, where they
Speaker 3: know so much about you that they anticipate your needs.
Speaker 3: And there's a good and the bad to.
Speaker 1: That, right, So just the actions that we would take
Speaker 1: in our homes can start to set up these expectations,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, that our technology will
Speaker 1: have about us. For example, the easiest way I think
Speaker 1: to illustrate this to today's audience is to talk about
Speaker 1: something like the Nest thermostat, where you have said it
Speaker 1: a certain way, and it starts to learn what your
Speaker 1: preferences are over time, and then it begins to automatically
Speaker 1: adjust without you ever having to touch it, to the
Speaker 1: point where it's even seeing quote unquote seeing when you
Speaker 1: are home versus not home. This is the sort of
Speaker 1: stuff that when incorporated into a device like Google Home,
Speaker 1: can become very powerful. But also, like you said, has
Speaker 1: this other side to it, this side that if we
Speaker 1: don't pay attention to it, it could become potentially harmful
Speaker 1: to us, or at least, at the very least anyway
Speaker 1: inconvenient to us. So, for example, with our setting up
Speaker 1: Google Home so that we would be able to control
Speaker 1: lighting and security systems and thermostats, not only would we
Speaker 1: have it set up so that it's to our preferences,
Speaker 1: but it actually has learned when we're at home versus
Speaker 1: when we're not at home, and what that information means
Speaker 1: could be potentially very harmful to us. So in your mind,
Speaker 1: where does accountability lie? Is this something that we ourselves
Speaker 1: are are at least partly accountable for that kind of information?
Speaker 1: Are the companies that create this technology? Are they accountable?
Speaker 1: It's such a cloudy area. Where do you see that?
Speaker 3: So it's a mix now clearly, and I think I
Speaker 3: want to kind of emphasize this. You mentioned earlier how
Speaker 3: this could become inconvenient. The reality is is that we
Speaker 3: as the consumer want this because we want it because
Speaker 3: it is convenient. We want technologies that are passive, We
Speaker 3: don't necessarily want to click buttons. We want technologies that
Speaker 3: are intelligent enough to be able to help us make
Speaker 3: decisions right. I mentioned earlier about anticipation, the challenge with
Speaker 3: convenience and convenience typically goes against the grain of security
Speaker 3: and privacy to some degree. If we really want a
Speaker 3: mother kind of anticipating our needs, what we want for lunch,
Speaker 3: where we want to go for travel, you get The
Speaker 3: negative of having your parent with you after you've kind
Speaker 3: of left for university or left for the office, is
Speaker 3: that you don't want them intruding in too many places
Speaker 3: or knowing too much about you. You want to keep
Speaker 3: certain parts of your life separate. And the reality is
Speaker 3: is that there's a trade off around here. So you know,
Speaker 3: I do think that there's a consumer drive towards this.
Speaker 3: It's just that we are not necessarily always prepared because
Speaker 3: there's a bit of a lag or a delay before
Speaker 3: the consequences of having this convenience are fully made aware
Speaker 3: aware to us. So in terms of the responsibility of
Speaker 3: who cares about this, we as consumers obviously care about it.
Speaker 3: You know. The companies like Google and Amazon, obviously you know,
Speaker 3: they would argue that by personalizing service to you, they
Speaker 3: are giving you this convenience. But the reality is it's
Speaker 3: really up to their best efforts or what they think
Speaker 3: is the right combination of privacy and security for now.
Speaker 3: The reason for that is the regulators take time to
Speaker 3: catch up, they don't necessarily know the latest, they didn't
Speaker 3: attend Google Io, and they don't necessarily know how to
Speaker 3: react or respond. So there's always going to be this
Speaker 3: lag between what the consumers want, what the companies are
Speaker 3: able to deliver in response to that need, and then
Speaker 3: what the regulators are able to introduce in terms of
Speaker 3: a balance in terms of rules and regulations, and in
Speaker 3: this particular case, in around privacy and security.
Speaker 1: And I would argue that the companies have it in
Speaker 1: their best interest to handle this as carefully as possible
Speaker 1: for multiple reasons. One, like you've just pointed out, If
Speaker 1: they do not, then that means that you're going to
Speaker 1: get that sort of tick talk effect, the tick being
Speaker 1: that they take a certain approach, the talk being that
Speaker 1: regulations are following, because if there's any mishandling, especially of
Speaker 1: a chaotic scale, then there's going to be a harsh
Speaker 1: response are down the line, and it doesn't behoove the
Speaker 1: companies to invite that in Also, obviously, if they do
Speaker 1: not prove to be responsible with that data that reflects
Speaker 1: poorly on them from a consumer standpoint as well, they'll
Speaker 1: lose customers. So it's not as if there's no incentive
Speaker 1: on the company's part to be careful, but at the
Speaker 1: same time they want to be able to leverage that
Speaker 1: data to make as good use of it as possible.
Speaker 1: We're going to wrap up our discussion about AI assistance
Speaker 1: and you, at least the twenty sixteen version after we
Speaker 1: come back from these messages. I've often said on this
Speaker 1: show that if you look around and you realize that
Speaker 1: the service you are using doesn't cost you anything, then
Speaker 1: essentially that means that you yourself are the product and
Speaker 1: that what you are doing is generating value for another
Speaker 1: entity out there, for example like Google, where you're using
Speaker 1: Google Search and then turn is generating value for Google.
Speaker 1: You yourself are the product being sold to other companies.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things where it's the balance
Speaker 1: between the desire to provide this service and to make
Speaker 1: revenue off of of something beyond just selling a device
Speaker 1: like the Google Home device, and making sure certain that
Speaker 1: you don't alienate your consumer base or invite particularly restrictive
Speaker 1: regulations to that end. Of course, in the United States,
Speaker 1: it's one story. In other parts of the world, there
Speaker 1: are different views of privacy and security, some of which
Speaker 1: go well beyond what is typically seen here in the US.
Speaker 1: Do you think the device do you think Google Home
Speaker 1: and things like Amazon's Echo, do you think those are
Speaker 1: going to have different levels of acceptance in different parts.
Speaker 2: Of the world?
Speaker 1: And where do you think might be a case for
Speaker 1: this is probably going to be a big sixs in
Speaker 1: one place? We've heard that Amazon Nico has been a
Speaker 1: pretty big success so far versus a market where it
Speaker 1: may not be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you've seen even things like credit card adoption
Speaker 3: differ from country to country just because there are different
Speaker 3: kind of cultural kind of moras around credit around potential
Speaker 3: privacy implications in terms of knowing kind of a transaction
Speaker 3: and kind of the origins and so forth. And so
Speaker 3: you've seen this in Europe in particular, right, So not
Speaker 3: all countries in Europe are equally predisposed to using credit
Speaker 3: cards as we are in the US. So yeah, I
Speaker 3: think there definitely will be different cultural adoption. But you know,
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, like you mentioned rightly,
Speaker 3: a lot of these companies it's in their interest to
Speaker 3: do a good job, because we as consumers only tend
Speaker 3: to shop from people we trust. The challenges, of course,
Speaker 3: is that we will sometimes wonder, just like you are
Speaker 3: right here in terms of this interview, you know, what
Speaker 3: are the implications. You know, you could very quickly go
Speaker 3: from a situation that appears like having your mother around
Speaker 3: all of you around you, to having a situation where
Speaker 3: having big brother around you in the nineteen eighty four
Speaker 3: kind of sense, in the Orwellian sense, where something is
Speaker 3: so aware of every patht about your life that maybe
Speaker 3: they just know a little bit too much. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, we're kind of entering that phase. Right. We've
Speaker 3: historically had a few places that we weren't necessarily connected to, right,
Speaker 3: and our home, with the exception obviously of our PCs
Speaker 3: and our phones have not been connected. They've been into
Speaker 3: some degree of thanks Grup, we sit down for dinner,
Speaker 3: we're not connected to the net. And I think what
Speaker 3: this revelation is making people aware of is that kind
Speaker 3: of in the future, there'll be very very few places
Speaker 3: left that are not networked, where our activities are not
Speaker 3: kind of transponding or transmitting or telegraphing kind of our activities,
Speaker 3: and you know, it will take time for people to adjust,
Speaker 3: and as I mentioned earlier, it will it won't just
Speaker 3: be about consumers and kind of buyers, but also you know,
Speaker 3: the governments will have a say, and as you pointed out,
Speaker 3: you know, in certain places the governments have already had
Speaker 3: a say around privacy, like in Europe with the introduction
Speaker 3: of the General Data Protection Regulation to better protect consumers.
Speaker 3: And I think we're all going to become a lot
Speaker 3: more sensitive to the privacy implications of always being online.
Speaker 1: And I think that we're seeing that as well, just
Speaker 1: you know, in other areas of technology. Just recently there
Speaker 1: was these reports coming out about the FBI's database of
Speaker 1: biometric data and the concerns people have about that, and
Speaker 1: even interesting questions.
Speaker 2: Like do do I own my own face? Should I?
Speaker 1: Shouldn't I have access to data about me? And the
Speaker 1: this Again, you know, we're in a world where our
Speaker 1: technology is pervasive, and in many ways that is amazing.
Speaker 2: It is giving us.
Speaker 1: An almost seamless experience of having our desires catered to
Speaker 1: before we can even give thought to them. That is
Speaker 1: the big promise of the Internet of things and I
Speaker 1: love that idea. It is something that really appeals to me.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, you start to realize that your
Speaker 1: regular actions are creating data, and that data does in
Speaker 1: fact have value, different value to different entities out there,
Speaker 1: and so having these sort of technologies and fining them in.
Speaker 2: Once you have reconciled.
Speaker 1: This idea and you realize that that this is going on,
Speaker 1: then you can start to make those strategies how is
Speaker 1: was the best way of handling that, both on the
Speaker 1: end user side and on the back end side, so
Speaker 1: that it is a responsible approach. That's really what your
Speaker 1: company is looking into, right, the idea of secure security
Speaker 1: and helping companies protect customer data.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's actually kind of very very kind of
Speaker 3: similar to this. So I think, you know, one of
Speaker 3: the things you were kind of touching upon is this
Speaker 3: kind of expectation of organizations to do a better job
Speaker 3: of safeguarding your information, essentially being responsible custodians of your data.
Speaker 3: The challenge for most companies, you know, maybe with less
Speaker 3: sophistication than at Google, but maybe even Google, is that
Speaker 3: they collect so much information about you, and they collect
Speaker 3: it in so many different places and so many applications.
Speaker 3: It doesn't necessarily mean that all that information is tied together,
Speaker 3: but you are leaving digital footprints across organizations, and so
Speaker 3: these companies are essentially becoming large data collection points, and
Speaker 3: it's hard for you as a consumer to know exactly
Speaker 3: what digital footprints you've left. You want to know what
Speaker 3: assets you've left with them, and believe it or not,
Speaker 3: you know if you think about accounting and how companies
Speaker 3: are expected to have responsible tools in place to track
Speaker 3: how much revenue that comes in, how that money is
Speaker 3: getting dispersed, who it's paying. So that's all about accounting
Speaker 3: and financial responsibility. On the digital side, there's very little
Speaker 3: of that today, and that's kind of the origin of
Speaker 3: big ID. You could think of big ID as a
Speaker 3: tool set to help big companies understand where their customer
Speaker 3: information is, what's at risk or potentially at risk, either
Speaker 3: in terms of breach or in terms of misuse, and
Speaker 3: then how to better understand how that information is getting
Speaker 3: used in the organization, either to help ensure that it's
Speaker 3: compliant with regulations or secondly that it's complied with their
Speaker 3: own kind of privacy rules, their own consent agreements that
Speaker 3: they've created between themselves and their consumers. I think that
Speaker 3: this idea of a ledger or accounting software for privacy
Speaker 3: information doesn't as yet exist, and I think increasingly, just
Speaker 3: given the number of digital touch points that we have
Speaker 3: with the companies we interact with, that it's going to
Speaker 3: be certainly a future requirement.
Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting, and I'm thankful that there
Speaker 1: are organizations like yours that are looking into this to
Speaker 1: try and create those best practices, because as we've seen recently,
Speaker 1: the scholarship has shown, it takes very few data points
Speaker 1: to be able to link some information to a specific person,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of companies out there may
Speaker 1: not even be aware of the implications of some of
Speaker 1: the data they're collecting, not through any sort of maliciousness.
Speaker 1: It simply is, as you point out, there's so many
Speaker 1: of these little digital touch points that you cannot necessarily
Speaker 1: anticipate what the consequences are from the very beginning. And
Speaker 1: it's amazing to me to think that this is going on.
Speaker 2: Everywhere, and.
Speaker 1: It's a snowball that's already going down the hill.
Speaker 2: It's just going to keep on going.
Speaker 1: It's very reassuring to hear that there are people actively
Speaker 1: thinking about these and trying these issues, and trying to
Speaker 1: find the best ways of handling that kind of information
Speaker 1: so that we don't have any we can avoid as
Speaker 1: many chaotic moments of absolute failure as possible. Again, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people assume that big companies are
Speaker 1: actively pursuing the collection and selling of all of the data,
Speaker 1: and that's not the case.
Speaker 2: Across the board. There are companies that are.
Speaker 1: Collecting a great deal of data in the pursuit of
Speaker 1: whatever business they do, but it's not through the it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily with an intent to do anything you know,
Speaker 1: commercial with that information. But knowing this makes it easier
Speaker 1: for those companies to be more responsible and also to
Speaker 1: maybe even get to a point where they change up
Speaker 1: their practices so that they're only collecting the points of
Speaker 1: data that are relevant to their business.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, look, certainly that's the intent of big Idea
Speaker 3: is to help companies be more responsible around their digital assets,
Speaker 3: their customer assets, which you could argue are probably their
Speaker 3: most important assets. You know, sometimes you're hear people talk
Speaker 3: about employees, and you know, your most important assets or
Speaker 3: your employees and they walk out the door every every night. Well,
Speaker 3: your customers are pretty valuable too, because they if they
Speaker 3: stop patronizing you, your business suffers, and their loyalty increasingly
Speaker 3: is very fickle. So if they don't have confidence that
Speaker 3: you are protecting their personal information, their kind of digital
Speaker 3: digital footprints, don't go somewhere else. We'll go to somebody
Speaker 3: that does take better care of that, which again is
Speaker 3: why it kind of makes sense to have technology that
Speaker 3: gives organizations better tooling to track, manage, protect those digital
Speaker 3: personal assets, but digital information that represents kind of who
Speaker 3: you are, where you live, where you've been, what you
Speaker 3: like when you're going on vacation, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Now, I've got a question for you personally, which is
Speaker 1: that are you at a point where you would adopt
Speaker 1: a technology such as Amazon Echo or Google Home or
Speaker 1: would you personally wait a little longer or you know,
Speaker 1: where do you stand on that? Because I can tell
Speaker 1: you being aware of these issues, I guess it's only
Speaker 1: fair that I answered my own question being aware of
Speaker 1: these issues and being cognizant of them. I'm still leaning
Speaker 1: toward getting one, knowing what I know, and taking the
Speaker 1: risk in order to have the benefit. My wife feels
Speaker 1: very differently about it. So that's why I do not
Speaker 1: have one. But I'm curious what, as you, as an
Speaker 1: ex expert on this subject, matter, how you feel about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think there's two things that come into play. Obviously,
Speaker 3: I'm a fifteen year veteran of the security industry with
Speaker 3: a company focused on enterprise privacy management now, so I
Speaker 3: understand some of the consequences and repercussions. But I'm also
Speaker 3: at heart a person that likes technology. I was a
Speaker 3: reader of Isaac Asimov as a kid Mainland, all the
Speaker 3: kind of great science fiction writers. And I realize the
Speaker 3: future is coming towards us and we could either try
Speaker 3: and hide or dock, or we could try and embrace
Speaker 3: it and understand the consequences. So for me personally, I
Speaker 3: look at this and try to understand how this technology
Speaker 3: will impact our lives going forward. So I will be
Speaker 3: an embracer of the technology because I think, as I
Speaker 3: said at the very beginning, there's a lot of good,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of convenience that comes with it, but
Speaker 3: it's also important for me to understand some of the
Speaker 3: consequences by going through it firsthand, because at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, if I'm you know, I'm part of
Speaker 3: a team building technology to better help protect customer information.
Speaker 3: That you understand the implications of these new whole automation
Speaker 3: car automation technologies.
Speaker 1: Excellent, Dimiti Srota, thank you so much, founder and CEO
Speaker 1: of Big ID. You really helped me and I hope
Speaker 1: my listeners understand a bit more of the implications of this.
Speaker 1: I realize that this sort of technology that has this
Speaker 1: incredible connection to our personal lives, really a level of
Speaker 1: intimacy that most technology does not have, carries with it
Speaker 1: some things that can be a little worrisome. But I
Speaker 1: agree with you. I think if we enter into it
Speaker 1: with open eyes and we are aware of the challenges,
Speaker 1: We're not denying that challenges exist, but we are aware
Speaker 1: of them. That allows us to actually overcome those challenges
Speaker 1: and reap the benefits of this really powerful tool. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on the show and talking
Speaker 1: with us.
Speaker 3: My pleasure chick here, byebye.
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to remember that mister Soota
Speaker 1: actually said we should embrace technology, but do so.
Speaker 2: In a way where we're aware of the.
Speaker 1: Consequences and we are doing our best to mitigate any
Speaker 1: negative fallout from this technology.
Speaker 2: Moving forward.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't deny it, we shouldn't try to stop it,
Speaker 1: but we should definitely be responsible with the way we
Speaker 1: develop it and the way that we use it. Potentially,
Speaker 1: it has the capacity to make our lives easier. I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine being able to handle everything by just shifting it
Speaker 1: over to your personal assistant who lives everywhere. You can
Speaker 1: access that personal assistant wherever you might be through whatever
Speaker 1: computer or smartphone or standalone device you happen to have
Speaker 1: at your disposal at that place, and access all of
Speaker 1: that those features, everything from entertainment to handling travel and
Speaker 1: stuff that you want taking care of you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: want to attend to yourself, so you can save that
Speaker 1: time to do something else. That's a really cool idea,
Speaker 1: and I love the promise of digital assistance, the idea
Speaker 1: that we will slowly get toward this future where the
Speaker 1: technology around us anticipates what we need before we can
Speaker 1: give voice to it. I love that thought and the
Speaker 1: idea that my life just becomes sort of magical as
Speaker 1: a result, because the technology is shifting things to my
Speaker 1: whim before I can even voice what that whim is,
Speaker 1: before I might even be aware there's a whim I
Speaker 1: could be whimless.
Speaker 2: I'm done saying him.
Speaker 1: Well, that was the twenty sixteen version of AI assistance,
Speaker 1: and you obviously there's a lot more to say now.
Speaker 1: I mean, some AI assistants have been abandoned, like Kortana
Speaker 1: no longer really a thing. Also, Amazon has been cutting
Speaker 1: way back on its division for its personal assistance that
Speaker 1: I will not name at this point, but yeah, there
Speaker 1: have been companies that have been taking massive cuts in
Speaker 1: those departments, at least as I'm recording these intros and outros,
Speaker 1: which by the way, was way back in January of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. This should be publishing many months after that.
Speaker 1: But I'm currently living in a time where those divisions
Speaker 1: are getting massive cuts because it turns out that these
Speaker 1: assistants have not been particularly valuable as far as revenue generation,
Speaker 1: and if you can't generate revenue from a product, eventually
Speaker 1: you start to see cutbacks for those products because it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to keep supporting them if they're just
Speaker 1: draining resources and not contributing to the overall health of
Speaker 1: the company. So it's been one of those things where
Speaker 1: companies have found it difficult to leverage these AI assistants
Speaker 1: in a way to generate revenue. And yeah, it may
Speaker 1: be that AI assistance since are one of those things
Speaker 1: that ultimately kind of fade away, unless that changes. Maybe
Speaker 1: by the time you're listening to that this has changed
Speaker 1: and I'll need to do an update on this episode. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me
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