{"id":29280,"date":"2018-06-15T03:40:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T10:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=29280"},"modified":"2018-06-14T14:04:45","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T21:04:45","slug":"voice-will-have-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/06\/15\/voice-will-have-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Voice will have control"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day, your car might be able to sense your mood and, if you\u2019re agitated, send soothing music. (photo from autospies.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Back in 1995, Shlomo Peller founded Rubidium in the visionary belief that voice user interface (VUI) could be embedded in anything from a TV remote to a microwave oven, if only the technology were sufficiently small, powerful, inexpensive and reliable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was way before IoT [the Internet of Things], when voice recognition was done by computers the size of a room,\u201d Peller told Israel21c. \u201cOur first product was a board that cost $1,000. Four years later, we deployed our technology in a single-chip solution at the cost of $1. That\u2019s how fast technology moves.\u201d<\/p>\n

But consumers\u2019 trust moved more slowly. Although Rubidium\u2019s VUI technology was gradually deployed in tens of millions of products, people didn\u2019t consider voice-recognition technology truly reliable until Apple\u2019s virtual personal assistant, Siri, came on the scene in 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cSiri made the market soar. It was the first technology with a strong market presence that people felt they could count on,\u201d said Peller, whose Ra\u2019anana-based company\u2019s voice-trigger technology now is built into Jabra wireless sports earbuds and 66 Audio PRO Voice\u2019s smart wireless headphones.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople see that VUI is now something you can put anywhere in your house,\u201d said Peller. \u201cYou just talk to it and it talks back and it makes sense. All the giants are suddenly playing in this playground and voice recognition is everywhere. Voice is becoming the most desirable user interface.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, the technology is not yet as fast, fluent and reliable as it could be. VUI depends on good internet connectivity and can be battery-draining.<\/p>\n

Peller said, in five years\u2019 time, voice user interface will be part of everything we do, from turning on lights, to doing laundry, to driving.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met with a big automaker to discuss voice interface in cars, and their working assumption is that, within a couple of years, all cars will be continuously connected to the internet, and that connection will include voice interface,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As voice user interface moves to the cloud, privacy concerns will have to be dealt with, he added. \u201cWe see that there has to be a seamless integration of local (embedded) technology and technology in the cloud. The first part of what you say, your greeting or \u2018wakeup phrase,\u2019 is recognized locally and the second part (like, \u2018What\u2019s the weather tomorrow?\u2019) is sent to the cloud. It already works like that on Alexa but it\u2019s not efficient. Eventually, we\u2019ll see it on smartwatches and sports devices.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Diagnosing illness<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tel Aviv-based Beyond Verbal analyzes emotions from vocal intonations. Its Moodies app is used in 174 countries to help gauge what speakers\u2019 voices (in any language) reveal about their emotional status. Moodies is used by employers for job interviewees, retailers for customers, and in many other scenarios.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s direction is shifting to health, as the voice-analysis platform has been found to hold clues to well-being and medical conditions, said Yoram Levanon, Beyond Verbal\u2019s chief scientist. \u201cThere are distortions in the voice if somebody is ill and, if we can correlate the source of the distortions to the illness we can get a lot of information about the illness,\u201d he told Israel21c. \u201cWe worked with the Mayo Clinic for two years confirming that our technology can detect the presence or absence of a cardio disorder in a 90-second voice clip.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are also working with other hospitals in the world on finding verbal links to ADHD, Parkinson\u2019s, dyslexia and mental diseases. We\u2019re developing products and licensing the platform, and also looking to do joint ventures with AI companies to combine their products with ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levanon said that, in five years, healthcare expenses will rise dramatically and many countries will experience a severe shortage of physicians. He envisions Beyond Verbal\u2019s technology as a low-cost decision-support system for doctors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe population is aging and living longer, so the period of time we have to monitor, from age 60 to 110, takes a lot of money and health professionals. Recording a voice costs nearly nothing and we can find a vocal biomarker for a problem before it gets serious,\u201d said Levanon.<\/p>\n

Beyond Verbal could synch with the AI (artificial intelligence) elements in phones, smart home devices or other IoT devices to understand the user\u2019s health situation and deliver alerts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sensing your mood<\/strong><\/p>\n

Banks use voice-analysis technology from Herzliya-based VoiceSense to determine potential customers\u2019 likelihood of defaulting on a loan. Pilot projects with banks and insurance companies in the United States, Australia and Europe are helping to improve sales, loyalty and risk assessment regardless of the language spoken.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were founded more than a decade ago with speech analytics for call centres to monitor customer dissatisfaction in real time,\u201d said chief executive officer Yoav Degani. \u201cWe noticed some of the speech patterns reflected current state of mind but others tended to reflect ongoing personality aspects, and our research linked speech patterns to particular behaviour tendencies. Now we can offer a full personality profile in real time for many different use cases such as medical and financial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Degani said the future of voice-recognition tech is about integrating data from multiple sensors for enhanced predictive analytics of intonation and content. \u201cAlso of interest,\u201d he said, \u201cis the level of analysis that could be achieved by integrating current state of mind with overall personal tendencies, since both contribute to a person\u2019s behaviour. You could be dissatisfied at the moment and won\u2019t purchase something but perhaps you tend to buy online in general, and you tend to buy these types of products.\u201d<\/p>\n

In connected cars, automakers will use voice analysis to adjust the web content sent to each passenger in the vehicle. \u201cIf the person is feeling agitated, they could send soothing music,\u201d said Degani.<\/p>\n

Personal robots, he predicted, will advance from understanding the content of the user\u2019s speech to understanding the user\u2019s state of mind. \u201cOnce they can do that, they can respond more intelligently and even pick up on depression and illness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Degani predicted that, in five years\u2019 time, people will routinely provide voice samples to healthcare providers for analytics, and human resources professionals will be able to judge a job applicant\u2019s suitability for a specific position on the basis of recorded voice analysis using a job-matching score.<\/p>\n

Israel21c<\/strong> is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One day, your car might be able to sense your mood and, if you\u2019re agitated, send soothing music. (photo from autospies.com) Back in 1995, Shlomo Peller founded Rubidium in the visionary belief that voice user interface (VUI) could be embedded in anything from a TV remote to a microwave oven, if only the technology were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3934,4330,1881],"class_list":["post-29280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-automotive","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}