Coronavirus & Impact on How We Use Technology
VoiceSignals #14 — Musings on Voice tech news
The Coronavirus, whether it becomes pandemic or not, is affecting how we work, how we do businesses, and how we use technology. Its spread is changing the whole world and its impact will be long-lasting, beyond the ups and downs on Wall Street. Not many survive to remember the deathly impact of the 1918 Spanish Influenza, so this is a first for many in living memory.
Voice is here to stay
People are working from home now, and Zoom has been banking on that. Its shares rose more than 60% over the last month, to $114 a share, or close to a $30 billion valuation. It remains to be seen on how well teleconferencing can be used to replace the real-life events and meetings that are being canceled. Events, like GSMA’s Mobile World Congress, may have been canceled but 5G and telecommuting are at the forefront of the conversation, as our need for better mobile connections pushes the technology. Meanwhile, this enforced way of working (remotely) on a broader scale, will allow businesses to discover how feasible it is to operate remotely and what that will mean on their operating costs.
Students must continue to learn and schools, from all over the world, are looking into technologies that can help students continue with their lessons from home. Software, designed to be adaptable, uses AI to monitor students and assess each student’s individual learns in order to plot the most effective route through the learning material. Schools in Hong Kong and China, like the Kellet School, that use the British curriculum are using such software to continue their work despite the coronavirus disruption.
Meanwhile, while voice-activated elevators might have been a novelty, and a bit of a joke when it came to understanding accents, they’ve now become a necessity. As people are advised to avoid touching surfaces, where the virus can linger for close to 48 hours, people are learning how to operate them using their voice instead of their fingers. Even going as far as to document the experience with video.
Data Privacy
China has been collecting vast amounts of data in order to combat and prevent the spread of the disease but in doing so it has often ignored privacy. Citizens are now willing to share their data in order to help public safety but what happens when all this is over? Chinese authorities will have immense amounts of data on citizens’ habits, what they consume, medicines, how they travel, with whom they interact, and so on. “An epidemic map, published by Chinese search giant Baidu, shows the location of confirmed and suspected cases in real-time so people can avoid going to the same places. Qihoo 360, China’s biggest cybersecurity company, is offering an app that lets users check if they have been on a train or plane with someone who contracted the virus.” What happens when or if this is converted into a tool that maps out with whom you should be in close proximity, singling out people who should not be contacted?
In the UK researchers are using geotagged tweets, from all over the world, to predict outbreaks of diseases and especially CONVID-19, now. To our knowledge, they’re not the only researchers working with social media. It makes sense that authorities want to know where people go in order to predict where a contagious disease will go also, but privacy again is taking a back seat. While researchers have to anonymize data, several surveillance states around the world are using the coronavirus disease outbreak as an excuse to justify all measures and disregard for privacy. In the US experts say mobile phone data would likely be fair game for public health and law enforcement officials if the outbreak were to spread there.
Obviously the human cost should be the primary concern but citizens’ privacy is a serious matter and we need to be alert. A crisis can produce positive outcomes if we learn both from the negative and the positive.
What we read online…
Behavioral Profile Pairing AI & How That Benefits Your Business?
Behavioral Profile Pairing AI, also known as agent-customer matching or call routing AI, leads to meaningfully improved call outcomes & better overall experience for everyone. Instead of continuously trying to create a perfect team of customer service agents who can handle anything the day throws at them, Behavioral Profile Pairing leverages emotion AI to better understand the expectations and emotional state of a customer before they even speak to an agent. Read more >
Siri and US elections
Siri, Apple’s built-in voice assistant, can now update you on what’s happening with different races around the US. It uses live election results from the Associated Press to present them both in audio and visually. The capability seems to still be rolling out. All the questions we asked, like “Who won the Super Tuesday primaries?”, where answered with web results. Read here >
The VoiceFirst Roundtable Season 1 Ep.1
The VoiceFirst Roundtable, VoiceFirst.FM’s half-hour one-on-one interview show, returns for Season 2. The show kicks off with Rana Gujral, CEO of Behavioral Signals, discussing the company’s origin story, the importance behind sentiment analysis, and the future of voice tech and AI which incorporates technology that helps provide greater context to interactions. Listen here >
Vatican’s Call for AI Ethics
Last Friday, Pope Francis along with Microsoft and IBM signed a document that outlines how artificial intelligence, including facial recognition, should be regulated. The initiative is called “Rome Call for AI Ethics” and continues a long-standing interest, from the Vatican, on technology developments and more specifically AI ethics. Basically the document outlines how AI should respect privacy, work reliably and without bias, consider human rights and operate transparently. While the Pope’s blessing may elevate AI’s… holiness, it will need a different type of intervention for effective legal regulations and restrictions to be set in place. Read more >
