Do you know how your voice assistant works?

(Photo credit @claybanks)

I have always had the gift of gab. Maybe that’s why I enjoy chatting with my Google Assistant in the mornings to learn about the weather forecast, and to review my daily schedule. (She has a British accent and recently gave me the nickname of The Notorious Spitshine Boombox. Maybe I need to get out more...)  It’s been fun to experiment with developing commands but kinda creepy sometimes when she just starts speaking because she ‘overheard’ a real-life conversation and was trying to help. I also wonder what profile is being built for me based on what I ask her to look up, what events are on my schedule, what media I watch via Google Home/Chromecast, etc. Does the convenience outweigh my privacy? I struggle with that question on a daily basis. 

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#TECHTOPIC

Voice tech has been enjoying huge growth over the past few years, with even more growth recently as people have been cooped up at home. Voice recognition technology uses machine learning (a subset of artificial intelligence) to turn spoken words into text. 

The first consumer-focused voice recognition software was launched back in 1990 called DragonDictate. You spoke one word at a time, pausing between each word. Nuance’s Dragon software is still one of the most accurate transcription software apps on the market for doing volumes of spoken transcription. With the launch of the voice assistants + speakers by the large tech firms, more people are using these voice technologies. The increase in usage also helps train the algorithms to work faster and faster to translate speech to text, then to commands, and then reply within mere seconds. 

Early iterations of Google Translate required users to speak a few words into the app, click send, and wait for the translation to be sent back to you. Painful when you need to know how to ask where the bathroom is when traveling! Back in Jan 2020, Google launched real-time translation for Android, allowing users to speak in one language into the phone and have the translated text appear instantly on the phone.

For Amazon, the spectacular failure of the Fire Phone was a blessing in disguise, as it led to the creation of Alexa. Interesting note on the naming of the voice assistants: Amazon (Alexa); Microsoft (Cortana) and Apple (Siri) are all proper names (likely to make people feel more comfortable speaking to a disembodied voice). Whereas Google has Google Assistant (Hey Google!),and they have far and away the most active user base at 500+M monthly users. 

As more consumers become accustomed to speaking to and interacting with a voice-controlled AI system, there is great promise for the expanded usage -- but we need to remain vigilant about the trust we place in these devices and how we safeguard privacy. Not to mention, we need to ensure that Alexa doesn’t order extra dollhouses! 

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#RANDOMREADS

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What tech tools are being used to help produce your food?

(Photo credit @markusspiske)

One of the great things about living in upstate NY is how easy it is to access nature & parks. When I live in cities, I was always within walking distance of a park or a body of water (Central Park, Sabino Canyon, Brooklyn Promenade, Fresh Pond, etc). Last weekend, I took my dog for a drive to a nearby lake. Along the way, I noticed that (in my electric car) I passed 2 Teslas, an Amish farming family in a horse & buggy, and countless farms. Growing up on a dairy farm seemed like a normal thing to do as a kid in this area, until I got to Princeton and classmates behaved like I had arrived from another planet. I wanted to focus on agriculture tech (or agtech) this week to highlight what tech evolutions are happening to help you and millions of others eat.

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#techtopic

Agriculture as an industry has been around since humans have existed, and agtech refers to the use of tech in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture with the aim of improving yield, efficiency and profitability. And while some early inventions like the wheel and stone milling helped individual farmers do more, it was the Industrial Revolution that brought tractors and other large machines to make huge changes in how farming was done. Now, the tech industry is bringing its collective brainpower to solve these critical challenges.

Drones are an obvious way to help bring more efficiency in crop production and fertilization, and monitoring of crops and herds. (Drones also take great aerial photos/videos of my cousins’ farm’s corn maze!). It’s incredibly hard for farmers to keep up with constantly changing weather patterns or to assimilate & analyze all the data so there are tech companies designing software tools to help with herd management and health tracking, crop rotation planning, and checking for weeds. There are even robots working on farms to do weeding as covid19 makes it more difficult to have concentrated amounts of people together in one place.  IOT sensors could work in combination with drones to help set up a monitoring network for crops or herds but only if the rural connectivity challenge is also addressed (see last week’s newsletter for more). 

In urban areas there has been a sharp rise in the vertical farming market to ensure that fresh produce isn’t shipped long distances and spoiled along the way; it’s grown right within city limits. More agfunds have begun to appear, investing in companies like Gro Intelligence who use AI to analyze unstructured data sets from the UN and the World Food Programme and help companies predict large-scale agricultural trends/impacts.

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#randomreads

• Hobbes & Me brings a beloved comic strip to stylish life

• How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus

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How would you manage working if you didn’t have access to broadband internet?

(Photo credit @hjbarraza)

I spend my days listening to the “dulcet” tones of construction noise. Our local gas company is tearing large holes up and down my street in order to install new gas lines for the entire neighborhood. While I appreciate the infrastructure upgrade, I am exhausted from listening all day long to the low hum of construction machines for the past 2 weeks. (Reminds me of when the floor would vibrate under me during the Google Cambridge construction & why our team often re-located to new environs during the day!) However, it also got me thinking about other ‘basic infrastructure rails’ that we take for granted, like high-speed internet connections that not everyone can access. These days, this lack of access has huge impact on how and whether communities can thrive in a post-pandemic world. 

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#techtopic

Imagine what it would be like to try & do your job if the internet disappeared whenever it rained. (True story: this used to happen to my family all the time when they were on DSL). Imagine having to drive to a library every time you wanted to do your homework or check your email. The digital divide in the US is in sharp focus right now with those who are required/requested to work from home or educate from home. 

The rural poor and BIPOC communities in the US are the ones being left behind, with estimates ranging from 21 million to 142 million Americans without access to high-speed internet. It doesn’t help that the FCC has been underestimating the problem, which affects the federal funding set aside to improve the issue. Cost is one of the biggest barriers to access, and in the US, we pay more for internet access than many other countries. And as we are designing educational policies to decide if schools will reopen, there is often an implicit assumption that these kids will have easy access to the high-speed internet required to run Zoom calls. 

As internet-dependent people move from densely populated to more suburban or rural areas to escape covid19, this is a great opportunity for small towns/rural regions to launch their own independent broadband networks to expand high-speed internet access and affordability. More states need to pass legislation to allow it (as 21 states have laws against it, due to influence from the large ISPs). Surprising and worrying to see Microsoft and HP are the only tech companies associated with the American Connection Project Broadband Coalition.

Want to learn more? Check out this recent in-depth report from New America. 

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#randomreads

• Ode to Cornell: Here’s a fun personality test from the Cornell Ornithology Lab: What Bird Are You Most Like? Tell me what you get, and I’ll share my results with you!

• Snappy dressers: check out these octagenarians who model other people’s forgotten laundry

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