Jan 24 2022 64 mins
Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast where you can expect conversations exploring the best opportunities in the world of Voice User Interfaces. Today we have the next interview from the "Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats" series - where we have interviews with individuals who have made a significant impact in the world of Voice Technology. We will explore the past work that makes them a “Pioneer” while also exploring topics around the current and future user behavior with Voice-Enabled experiences.
Today my guest is Jeff Adams. Jeff has been in the Voice Tech space for decades. His first role in the space was at the company known today as Nuance, however we discuss how they went through a few different names along the way. Following his time at Nuance he joined Yap as a VP of Research, the company who would later be sold to Amazon as the first acquisition for the Alexa project. After spending a few years at Amazon after the acquisition, Jeff started his own Speech Technology company called Cobalt Speech where he is the CEO today.
We discussed various topics such as:
- How did Jeff first get interested in Voice Technology?
- How did Jeff's roles change from Nuance, to Yap, to Amazon, to Cobalt and what use cases did he help bring to market?
- Background on how Jeff helped Yap achieve the "first known example of fully automatic speech recognition matching human performance."
- What have been some of the biggest changes in Speech and Language Technology over the last few decades?
- What are the most important problems to solve with Speech and Language Technology in 2022?
I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jeff Adams on the Speechly Podcast!
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Twitter - @CobaltSpeech
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Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI