Talk to Me by James Vlahos

“How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think” is the subtitle of a new non-fiction book, TALK TO ME, by author James Vlahos. He argues that we are entering the era of voice computing and that like previous technological disruptions (e.g., changes with mainframes, desktops, internet search and mobile computing), it will involve a paradigm shift and platform war. Vlahos divides his text into three parts labeled Competition, Innovation and Revolution, with about ten percent allocated to notes and an index. Of course, there’s quite a bit of discussion about Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, plus chatbots, conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language systems. Some of the historical background describes the roughly twenty-five-year development of Siri and “her component technologies” and briefly touches on the choice of Alexa as a wake word. Later, there is an entire chapter devoted to personalities, noting our penchant to personify and to invest more emotionally when a digital assistant is anthropomorphic (if you doubt this, take a moment and think back to Microsoft’s annoying on-screen helper, Clippy). Vlahos also discusses some of the reasons why female voices were chosen and the potential for truly individualized AIs in the future (described in US Patent 8,996,429) whereby “the bot can present the best possible personality to any given user.” Other factors like the impact of virtual companionship on one’s desire to socialize, and downsides such as eavesdropping or privacy concerns are included. Overall, Vlahos succeeds in making the potential advances of voice computing understandable and relevant, thereby captivating student interest with TALK TO ME.