Speaker 1: Here's a quick question for you. What percentage of your
Speaker 1: time working on your computer do you spend typing versus talking?
Speaker 1: If your answer is something like ninety five percent typing,
Speaker 1: five percent talking, or maybe zero percent talking, you are
Speaker 1: leaving some big productivity gains on the table because talking
Speaker 1: is faster, It gets ideas out before your analytical brain
Speaker 1: starts second guessing them, and for most tasks, it produces
Speaker 1: better first drafts than anything near labor over at a keyboard.
Speaker 1: Yet when Neil and I ask audiences this question, almost
Speaker 1: everyone is still close to one hundred percent typing. So
Speaker 1: today we're going to get into why voice should be
Speaker 1: a core part of your workflow, not just a novelty.
Speaker 1: We are going to cover when talking beats typing and
Speaker 1: also when it doesn't, the difference between dictation mode and
Speaker 1: advanced voice mode in your AI tools and this big
Speaker 1: software we both rely on day to day to do this,
Speaker 1: and by the end of this episode you are going
Speaker 1: to have a very clear picture of where to start
Speaker 1: and probably a new piece of software to try out
Speaker 1: before the week is over. Welcome to how IAI with
Speaker 1: me Doctor Amantha Imber and Neo Applin, head of Inventium AI.
Speaker 1: Each episode we share one practical way to use AI
Speaker 1: better at work and in life. No fluff, no dech jargon,
Speaker 1: just things you can use straight away.
Speaker 2: Somantha, the world of work has changed, particularly the way
Speaker 2: we work with our computers has changed over the times,
Speaker 2: and we've got AI and all these kind of things
Speaker 2: are now available to us. But question for you, what's
Speaker 2: the thing that's changed the most in the way that
Speaker 2: you work with your computer in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: The biggest change by far of how I interact not
Speaker 1: just with AI, but also with my computer, is that
Speaker 1: I have gone from typing being how I interact with
Speaker 1: my AI and computer being the predominant way to I
Speaker 1: would say ninety percent of my interaction when I'm working
Speaker 1: with just me and my AI or me and my
Speaker 1: computer is through talking to it, like blah blah talk
Speaker 1: talk rather than type. So about ten percent of what
Speaker 1: I would do on the computer is typing, ninety percent
Speaker 1: is talking.
Speaker 2: That's a huge change.
Speaker 1: It is absolutely massive, and it has made me so
Speaker 1: much faster and so much more effective. And I also
Speaker 1: think in the age of AI, where so much of
Speaker 1: our written communications sounds very aified like as one example,
Speaker 1: like one use case from my life, any almost any
Speaker 1: email that I write, except for quite lengthy ones that
Speaker 1: need a lot of content summarization or documenting something. But
Speaker 1: like when I'm just sending a much less complex email
Speaker 1: to someone will I will talk it out and then
Speaker 1: it will appear through dictation software on my computer. And
Speaker 1: I feel that that sets me apart from the vast
Speaker 1: majority of people who are using AI to write their emails.
Speaker 1: What do you reckon it is for your workflows?
Speaker 2: I would say it's probably eighty twenty eighty typing, twenty
Speaker 2: percent voice. Now I'm late to the voice game, and
Speaker 2: I see you as inspiration on trying to get further
Speaker 2: up there. For me, it's about different use cases on
Speaker 2: how and why I need to type versus when I
Speaker 2: need to talk, And I'll explain that in a minute.
Speaker 2: But for me, it's it's all that speed. And I
Speaker 2: can see why people are getting AI to write their
Speaker 2: emails because it's faster for me to give you five
Speaker 2: dot points typing slow typing, and then saying, write the
Speaker 2: rest of this email. So that probably takes I don't know,
Speaker 2: let's say thirty seconds, maybe a minute something like that.
Speaker 2: I write my five top points. I typed them and
Speaker 2: then I get to clean it up. But if you're
Speaker 2: talking that, it'll probably take you that at the same time.
Speaker 2: So I can see the time saving of using AI.
Speaker 2: I can see the benefit of using our own voice
Speaker 2: to be able to write those things. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: using dictation software, I'm getting more and more into But
Speaker 2: it's great for those kind of things. But questions for you,
Speaker 2: manthe you're using a lot of the times, when are
Speaker 2: you using what purposes are you thinking there's the best
Speaker 2: for versus when you would be typing.
Speaker 1: For So I use it for something I've been using
Speaker 1: it for for quite a long time, like at least
Speaker 1: a year, probably longer though is I will often go
Speaker 1: for a walk with my AI and I will talk
Speaker 1: to it, particularly when I'm trying to nut through a problem.
Speaker 1: And you know, Neo, you've built various GPTs and agents
Speaker 1: for Inventium that will help tease out creative solutions to problems.
Speaker 1: We've got our Brainstorm Buddy GPT, which I definitely use
Speaker 1: quite a lot. So I will often go for a
Speaker 1: walk with my AI, not through a problem. Certainly when
Speaker 1: I was working on the Energy Game book, I would
Speaker 1: go for I would say daily walks when I was
Speaker 1: trying to nut through the structure of the book and
Speaker 1: also the mechanics of the game that I was trying
Speaker 1: to design. That would just be a daily thing for me.
Speaker 1: So that's been in my workflow for quite some time.
Speaker 1: But in terms of when I'm at my computer in
Speaker 1: my inbox, I use it all the time. There's not
Speaker 1: too many emails except for the more complex ones that
Speaker 1: I'm using AI to write with me. But gosh, it's
Speaker 1: really it's anything. It's anything from like when I'm sending
Speaker 1: text messages to people, I will always talk those rather
Speaker 1: than type those with my phone because I've also got
Speaker 1: dictation software on my phone. I'm talking things. If I
Speaker 1: am labeling a file, I will talk out the label
Speaker 1: rather than type it. Like it's literally everything except for
Speaker 1: some very specific use cases where I think that typing
Speaker 1: is still superior. And what I think because I mean,
Speaker 1: we both do a lot of keynote speaking on AI,
Speaker 1: and something I've been asking a lot of the audiences
Speaker 1: that I've been in front of late is what percentage
Speaker 1: of the time of people talking versus typing to their
Speaker 1: computer and specifically their AI and I'm still finding that
Speaker 1: most people are at pretty close to one hundred percent typing,
Speaker 1: and there's just there's so much to be gained, Like
Speaker 1: you know, just as a very quick example, I mean,
Speaker 1: the average person I think maybe types it about fifty
Speaker 1: or sixty words per minute.
Speaker 2: I think that feels about right. But you've also got
Speaker 2: then the error rates on top of that, so you've
Speaker 2: got to go. You can type fast, but you get
Speaker 2: fixed mistakes, so it's probably average of forty words a
Speaker 2: minute effectively.
Speaker 1: That's so true. And for talking, I know that I
Speaker 1: talk quite fast, but I talk at about one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty words per minute, and so look at that,
Speaker 1: like it's almost three times as fast as you know
Speaker 1: for me to talk rather than type.
Speaker 2: There's also another part of that, which is science. This
Speaker 2: is one of the things we've been talking and our
Speaker 2: in your keynote, which is when you're just talking, you're
Speaker 2: using a different part of your brain than if you're typing.
Speaker 2: Typing is very analytical and things like that. You're getting
Speaker 2: your brain and involved. They call it a prefrontal interference,
Speaker 2: whereas if you're just talking, that prefrontal inference is not there.
Speaker 2: You're not critiquing yourself so much as just getting out
Speaker 2: from the heart to be able to get those things out,
Speaker 2: and so your ideas will flow faster by talking than
Speaker 2: it would be from typing.
Speaker 1: And now let's get into when should we talk versus
Speaker 1: when should we type? Because at Inventium AI we've got
Speaker 1: very clear views on this. So Neo, when should people
Speaker 1: be talking and when should they be typing to their
Speaker 1: AI slash computer.
Speaker 2: This is up to you as well, but we've got this.
Speaker 2: We're a bit opinionated in these things. But talking is
Speaker 2: so much better for idea generation. So as Amantha said,
Speaker 2: when you were when you're chatting to yourself, when you
Speaker 2: go through the walk, all that kind of stuff, those
Speaker 2: are great to be able to just talk it out.
Speaker 2: You're not getting your analytical brain in the way. Same
Speaker 2: thing things with like exploratory thinking, like what's this going
Speaker 2: to do? Looking at ideas, options, strategies, things like that.
Speaker 2: Another part is anything like emotional or autobiographical like what
Speaker 2: do I think about this? Or or you know you're
Speaker 2: getting down a personal letter or something like that. Then
Speaker 2: very very much I would be using the dictation. I'd
Speaker 2: also say that small bites are great for dictation. So
Speaker 2: renaming a file name, for example, that's a really easy one.
Speaker 2: You're changing the title of a document easy as well.
Speaker 1: And I would say on that giving instructions is also
Speaker 1: a lot to talk out. So for example, if I'm
Speaker 1: prompting my AI or getting it to work through something,
Speaker 1: it is much more natural for someone to talk through
Speaker 1: those instructions because we're really used to giving people instructions
Speaker 1: in our lives, particularly if you've got children, and so
Speaker 1: that is a really natural one and a really good
Speaker 1: use case for talking rather than typing.
Speaker 2: And where I use typing, this is why I'm more
Speaker 2: eighty percent than you, which is the other way around.
Speaker 2: Adding thoughts to existing work, editing precision or logical structure
Speaker 2: type stuff, you're much better off typing. I do an
Speaker 2: awful lot of presentation decks, and so there's like graphic
Speaker 2: design plus typing, and I find that just with number
Speaker 2: of the keys and keys and keyboards and things like that,
Speaker 2: I do find I do a lot more typing for
Speaker 2: those types of things as well. So yeah, analytical stuff
Speaker 2: maybe typing maybe better. But I'm finding I'm doing a
Speaker 2: up lend now and getting down my first draft using
Speaker 2: voice and then I'm going through and editing with typing.
Speaker 2: So it's a good one two punch.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now let's talk about the tools and also the
Speaker 1: functions within the tools. So let's first talk about the
Speaker 1: AI tools like Copilot, Chatchipt, Claude, Gemini the most common ones.
Speaker 1: So how can people talk like? What do those little
Speaker 1: buttons look like? How do they unlock voice?
Speaker 2: Yep, the different tools have different buttons on there. Just
Speaker 2: on the normal prompt window, you'll see that there's a
Speaker 2: little microphone. The microphone is dictation, and there's an little
Speaker 2: one looks like a squiggly waveform, and that one's Advanced
Speaker 2: voice mode. Now not all of them have the Advance
Speaker 2: Worice mode, but the dictation's on. I'm pretty much all
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: So dictation is great if you just want to get
Speaker 2: your thoughts down uninterrupted. It just basically transcribes everything you say,
Speaker 2: ums ers, all those kind of things are captured in
Speaker 2: there as well, and that's great where you've just got
Speaker 2: an idea stream of consciousness, get my thoughts down. Advance
Speaker 2: Worice mode is great when you want to have a
Speaker 2: chat via your mouth with AI. You talked to it.
Speaker 2: It talks to you. It's not writing on the screen
Speaker 2: so much. Well it does that as well, but it's
Speaker 2: just talking to you. And both are great for different
Speaker 2: things like if you've got ideation you want to get
Speaker 2: throw ideas around, I'd use the advance voice mode. If
Speaker 2: you want to get your first draft of thoughts down,
Speaker 2: like a brain dump, then absolutely I would be using
Speaker 2: the dictation mode on that. And so that's available on
Speaker 2: the mainscreen tools. But the other tools that you use
Speaker 2: are quite different.
Speaker 1: Yes, So my main go to tool, which would be
Speaker 1: software like aside from the standard software like PowerPoint and
Speaker 1: Word and Chrome or Brave as our brows, this would
Speaker 1: be the software that if you were to say, okay,
Speaker 1: this software is now taken off your computer, I would
Speaker 1: be sobbing in the corner, curled up in a ball.
Speaker 1: So this is whisper flow, and I want to get
Speaker 1: the spelling right, so it's wisp r flow. Two words,
Speaker 1: and this is I've tested quite a lot of software,
Speaker 1: this is by far the most accurate and useful. So
Speaker 1: that's an important combination accurate plus useful for dictation software.
Speaker 1: It's accurate. I think we all know what accurate means.
Speaker 1: But useful. What it does is if I am talking
Speaker 1: and then I'm like, actually, no, sorry, this and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, so it will auto correct mistakes that I make.
Speaker 1: It will also remove filler words like um and ah,
Speaker 1: and it will also auto punctuate, like if it can
Speaker 1: see that I am like first, do this, second, do this, third,
Speaker 1: do that, it will automatically put those in numbers or
Speaker 1: bullet points, depending on what it sounds like. My intent is.
Speaker 1: It's very good at understanding that. And really the only
Speaker 1: problem that I've found is that it still sometimes uses
Speaker 1: American spelling. So I will always proof freed anything that
Speaker 1: I do dictate in, you know, if it's something that
Speaker 1: will be read by others, like an email for example.
Speaker 1: But I have found that it is leagues above anything
Speaker 1: else I have tried.
Speaker 2: I have tried others because you know, I like to
Speaker 2: try different pieces of software. First off, I love whisper flow.
Speaker 2: It is great and you can set the shortcut on
Speaker 2: your keyboard and you just press that button, you talk
Speaker 2: into your microphone and you're often running. It then places
Speaker 2: that text anywhere, which I love. So you don't have
Speaker 2: to go to the whisper flow app. You are using
Speaker 2: whichever app you are already in. You press the button
Speaker 2: and it then just types for you, and I love that.
Speaker 2: It's a seamless the way it works. Some of the
Speaker 2: others you have to go and dictate to the app
Speaker 2: and then you cut and paste, which can be a
Speaker 2: bit clunky. Too much trouble, too much trouble. But yeah,
Speaker 2: whisper Flow for the accuracy, the formatting, and for the
Speaker 2: auto correcting is awesome. Some of the others that I've used,
Speaker 2: open Whisper, I've had a bit of a play with.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at another one at the moment called where
Speaker 2: are we Let me just get it up. Mac Whisper
Speaker 2: is another one, and I'm quite enjoying mac Whisper. It's
Speaker 2: a more open source kind, actually not open it's free.
Speaker 2: There we have there's a paid version and a free version.
Speaker 2: It's not quite as good as whisper Flow, but for
Speaker 2: the price you're paying, it's excellent. The price you're paying
Speaker 2: of zero, yeah, exactly for the Windows people out there.
Speaker 2: One I've seen is called a Brainier. I've never never
Speaker 2: actually played with Brady yet. But ultimately, none of these
Speaker 2: in you because one spit of software I was using
Speaker 2: back in two thousand and one was Dragon naturally speaking
Speaker 2: for those who are in those kind of words. But
Speaker 2: you can add them to your work day, and there's
Speaker 2: lots of them out there. As much as I love
Speaker 2: whisper flow, and i've if you can't be bother trying
Speaker 2: them all, try whisper flow, like it is far and
Speaker 2: away better than the others. But what I do like
Speaker 2: seeing is there's a a bunch of different software out there,
Speaker 2: so it's not just a one and done. You can
Speaker 2: do things where you can run all of the software
Speaker 2: on your computer so your voice doesn't go to the cloud,
Speaker 2: so therefore it's nice and safe and it's a cure
Speaker 2: and things like that. So there are local models you
Speaker 2: can try. Are the ones that you can play around with.
Speaker 2: Maybe the interfaces be different than you want. Some of
Speaker 2: the other features you might have there, which might be
Speaker 2: I can upload it to an audio file, maybe a
Speaker 2: voice memo and all then transcribe that as well. So
Speaker 2: all these different features, but they can help you in
Speaker 2: different ways.
Speaker 1: So I hope that you are now feeling inspired to
Speaker 1: change your workflow. If you are someone that is doing
Speaker 1: majority typing to your computer, maybe you'll try talking to
Speaker 1: it today and if you know someone, maybe you sit
Speaker 1: next to someone that's just like a hardcore typer and
Speaker 1: you never hear them talking to their computer, maybe share
Speaker 1: this episode with them for a little bit of inspiration.
Speaker 1: How AI was hosted by me Amantha Imber and Neo Applan.
Speaker 1: A big thank you Martin Imber who does our sound editing,
Speaker 1: and Jim Rubio for production support, and thank you to
Speaker 1: John Kilby who composed the theme music.