
National Consumer Survey Reveals that a lot of Consumers Want Voice Assistants in Mobile Apps
Bret Kinsella
Voicebot, November 09, 2020
Adding voice assistant features to mobile apps was once a very costly and complex undertaking. However, with the rise of white label solutions from Aiqudo, Alan AI, Microsoft, SoundHound, and Spokestack along with open-source tools such as Rasa, the cost, time, and complexity have dramatically decreased over the past two years.
”Over 45% of consumers said they would “very much” or that “it would be nice” to have voice assistant features within their favorite mobile apps
Bret KinsellaFounder and CEO, Voicebot.ai


Voicebot Podcast: David Patterson Chief Science Officer of Aiqudo Discusses NLU and Semiotics
Bret Kinsella
Voicebot, October 31, 2020
Today we talk about AI, NLU, NLP, semiotics and symbolic language representations, and much more. We break down how Aiqudo’s architecture is different from other popular voice assistant platforms and how that enables higher efficiency in NLU training through unsupervised learning as well as semantic understanding accuracy.
”We use Semiotics to get a high degree of accuracy without having to provide huge amounts of labeled training data. Our approach is an unsupervised approach that allows us to scale rapidly as we add new fine-grained intents in new domains.
Dr. David PattersonChief Scientist, Aiqudo


Siri-like Language Processing for Smart Glasses
IW Staff
IndustryWeek, October 01, 2020
mCloud brings natural language processing to connected workers through partnership with Aiqudo. Connected workers will benefit from reduced training time, ease of use, and support for multiple languages.
”mCloud's partnership with Aiqudo provides AssetCare with a distinct competitive edge as we deliver AssetCare to our oil and gas, nuclear, wind, and healthcare customers all around the world.
Dr. Barry PoPresident, Connected Solutions and CMO


Sensory and Aiqudo Team Up to Deliver Comprehensive Voice Assistant
Eric Weiss
Mobile ID World, January 06, 2020
Aiqudo and Sensory have teamed up to develop more comprehensive voice assistant technology. The new joint solution will blend Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree and TrulySecure tech with Aiqudo’s Q Action platform.
”Working with Aiqudo allows our two companies to provide the industry a turn-key solution for voice assistants.
Todd MozerCEO, Sensory


Byton’s electric SUV features a massive 48-inch display, controlled by your voice
Sasha Lekash
Mashable, January 05, 2020
The main dashboard in the M-Byte isn’t a touchscreen, so voice will be a crucial tool to control and navigate through the screen options.
”It is a smart device on wheels.
Dr. Daniel KirchertCEO Byton


Byton is launching an app developer program for its M-Byte electric SUV
Kirsten Korosec
TechCrunch, January 05, 2020
The company announced Sunday ahead of CES, the annual tech trade show in Las Vegas, that it will launch a developer program to unlock the kinds of apps that will turn these screens into an interactive and valuable experience for customers.
”Byton’s unique user interface offers developers a challenge and an opportunity to engage with an in-car experience like none they have ever seen.
Jeff ChungVP Digital Engineering


120 AI Predictions For 2020
Gil Press
Forbes, December 09, 2019
2020 predictions for a wide range of topics: Autonomous vehicles, deepfakes, small data, voice and natural language processing, human and augmented intelligence, bias and explainability, edge and IoT processing, and many promising applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies and tools.
”As voice becomes more useful for consumers to quickly and easily do things with just a simple voice command, we’ll see the volume of voice queries explode.
John FosterCo-founder and CEO, Aiqudo


How Do People Use Voice Search?
Toby Cox
The Manifest, December 04, 2019
Voice technology changes the way we interact with our devices and search for things online. Our survey finds that people who use voice search are likely to use it multiple times a week and most likely use it to search for information, products, and services.
”It’s not like people will do half their searches with voice and half with text.
John FosterCo-founder and CEO, Aiqudo


There’s no such thing as a free lunch!
Vladimir Dobrynin, Xiwu Han, Alexey Mishenin, David Patterson, Niall Rooney, Julian Serdyuk
KD Nuggets,
While Deep Learning can help solve some problems with remarkable human-like ability (sometimes even outperforming humans in tasks such as image recognition and game playing), there are many examples where other types of machine learning are just as effective or even more suitable – providing better decision making, while often requiring less training data, less computing power and less “tweaking”.
”Deep learning, when in the hands of experienced and knowledgeable experts, has shown enormous potential to solve many types of problems with an almost human like ability – but that doesn’t make it right for every type of problem or company situation
David PattersonAiqudo Head of AI


Amazon Is Crowdsourcing Alexa’s Answers, So This Should Be Fun
Courtney Linder
Popular Mechanics,
There’s always that deep sigh of disappointment—or sometimes even laughter or wonder—when you ask an Alexa voice assistant a question and she has absolutely no idea what you’re talking about: “Sorry, I don’t know that one.”
”The value of the crowd is enormous—you validate commands based on multiple inputs, you capture variations on commands, it’s by nature opt-in, so you don’t have privacy issues with listening to people’s dialog without their consent.
John FosterAiqudo Co-Founder and CEO


Amazon Wants to Put Alexa in Cars. Google and Apple Are There Already
Matt Day
Bloomberg,
Amazon is entering a market already contested by Google and Apple Inc., not to mention automakers leery of ceding control of the dashboard to Big Tech.
”Amazon’s Achilles heel is not having a play on the phone. They’re going at it the best way they can. But I do think they suffer from this disadvantage.
John FosterAiqudo Co-Founder and CEO


Moor Insights & Strategy Podcast – Aiqudo
Mark Vena
Moor Insights and Strategy,
Aiqudo is doing some extremely disruptive things in the exploding voice platform segment with a “voice to action” approach that is indeed both unique and compelling.
”Voice just becomes ubiquitous. It becomes the primary interface to our technology. Once you use voice for some of these activities, you never go back to typing - it's just easier and faster. The entry points for voice are proliferating - smart speakers, your car, your phones, wearables, voice remote on your TV ... think it, do it!
John FosterAiqudo Co-Founder and CEO


How to Exert Privacy Control Over Your Home Speakers
Jack M. Germain
Ecommerce Times,
Getting a measure of control about access to the recordings varies with the device. Users of smart speakers need to exercise a degree of control with smart speakers, just as they should with video recording devices.
”Voice, done properly, will make our lives easier and our interactions with our technology frictionless, but these (privacy) issues will delay progress toward that goal
John FosterAiqudo Co-Founder and CEO


5 Innovative Ways AI Is Charting New Territory
Jackie Snow
CMO,
Instead of using hands to control our technology, companies are banking on voice commands to be the future of interfacing with our expanding quiver of devices… Aiqudo wants to make every app on a smartphone controllable with voice commands, regardless of what device a user might have.
”Voice should be completely intuitive. The NLP technology in the background is built to understand the various ways a command might be said.
John FosterAiqudo Co-Founder and CEO


The State of Conversational AI and Consumer Trust
Riley Panko
Clutch Business Services Survey,
Conversational AI voice technology offers new opportunities to automate everyday responsibilities. Yet, people indicate a lack of trust toward these tools’ abilities to successfully complete tasks. Nearly three-quarters of people are unlikely to trust conversational AI to answer simple calls or emails, but experts say this hesitancy will shift as the technologies become more mainstream, despite security risks.
Additional coverage: Voicebot [May 28], Security Baron [May 30]
”The higher the stakes, and the more significant the consequences, the more trust you need before you can get comfortable with it.
Rajat MukherjeeAiqudo Co-Founder and CTO


Voice of the Car – Q Actions Auto Mode
Aiqudo Team
The Voice of the Car Summit,
The Aiqudo team presented Q Actions Auto Mode at the Voice of the Car Summit in San Francisco. Simple voice commands are used to initiate actions safely and hands-free from the car – productivity tasks, personal tasks, messaging and calling, joining meetings, and even shopping … a whole range of Actions not supported by any other voice assistant platform today.
”You already know what you want to do - and it exists in your apps on your phone. Our job is to make it easy with intuitive voice commands. In our platform, the developer does not have to do anything. There are thousands of actions in our platform and we've never spoken to a developer.
John FosterAiqudo Co-Founder and CEO


The rise of the ubiquitous voice assistant
Rajat Mukherjee
TechTalks,
Millions of users are already using these powerful mobile apps on their phones on a daily basis. We don’t see this changing dramatically in the near future. The only way for voice assistants to be ubiquitous is to embrace the simplicity and trust that users have in their mobile apps. In fact, the IDC Consumer IoT Survey presented at CES 2019 shows that voice usage is almost twice as much on mobile devices (~70%) than on smart speakers (~36%).
”There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. We should incorporate user needs into these systems in a practical, simple way. We need apps to be included broadly in these solutions.
Rajat MukherjeeAiqudo Co-Founder and CTO


AiThority Interview Series With Rajat Mukherjee, Co-Founder and CTO at Aiqudo
Sudipto Ghosh
AiThority,
At Aiqudo, we’ve addressed this issue of “Actionable Intent” with proprietary technology that encompasses the rich app ecosystem without requiring APIs, and without asking app developers to do a lot of work and reinvent the wheel.
”The marketing hype wave will wear off a bit, but the world will indeed be impacted by the advances in deep learning and the more pervasive application of technology to automate, recommend, and reduce human error.
Rajat MukherjeeAiqudo Co-Founder and CTO


Which voice assistant speaks the most languages, and why?
Kyle Wiggers
VentureBeat,
Contrary to popular Anglocentric belief, English isn’t the world’s most-spoken language by total number of native speakers — nor is it the second. In fact, the West Germanic tongues rank third on the list, followed by Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, and Russian. (Mandarin and Spanish are first and second, respectively.) …
”Our models don’t get confused by hybrid languages, because when they look at a sentence, they just look for the intent. And if some of the words are English and some of the words are in Hindi, that’s okay
John FosterCEO Aiqudo


The Big Hangup: Why the Future Is Not Just Your Phone
Timothy W. Martin and Sarah Krouse
The Wall Street Journal,
Steve Jobs took to a stage a dozen years ago this week to introduce a revolutionary new product to the world: the first Apple iPhone. That groundbreaking device, and the competitors that followed, changed the way people communicated, ordered dinner and hailed a taxi. The technology world reoriented around the smartphone, supplanting the personal computer, MP3 players, the digital camera and maps. And the mobile economy was born.
”What’s not going to go away: the need to have a device that’s constantly with you, to remote control your life. At the moment, we call that the smartphone. Does it become smaller, sit on your wrist, a chip in the back of your mouth? Maybe. The concept needs to remain constant.
Jaede TanApp Annie


Artificial Intelligence Is About to Make a Splash at CES 2019
Jon Swartz
Barrons,
For something not visible to the human eye, artificial intelligence will be omnipresent at the Consumer Electronics Show this week.
AI, the fast-growing technology behind speech recognition and machine learning, will be tangible in the form of hardware and software offerings…
”There will be tons of voice assistants, especially for cars and home appliances ...
John FosterCEO, Aiqudo


Does AI Really Speak Our Language?
Ben Dickson
PC Magazine,
Artificial intelligence has come a long way in handling tasks that involve language, but it’s still missing most of the nuance and context that we humans take for granted.
”We can't hope that real consciousness will become part of AI in the near future… to move from 'simulated' conversations to 'real' conversations, we need to empower machines with things like common sense, understanding of context, and creativity.
David PattersonHead of AI, Aiqudo
