Wake Up: The Truth About Alexa

Lauren Johnson
  • 5.0 (9)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

Both true personal stories & professional field experts worldwide sharing the impact that the Alexa wake word has had. Fields include technology, education, psychology, and more. Young children, teens, and women experiencing severe bullying, sexual harassment, name changes, suicidal ideation, and identity erasure. We will discuss corporate ethics and responsibility, name bombardment, and the choice to use a human name for technology.

  1. Season 2: Episode 1 Human names in AI Expert Panel

    04/28/2023

    Season 2: Episode 1 Human names in AI Expert Panel

    A discussion of AI ethics and naming with incredible expert guest panel including Alexa Ard (videographer/producer/editor for Well-Being at The Washington Post), Dr. Alexa Hagerty (Associate Fellow University of Cambridge), and K. Alexa Koenig JD, PhD (Co-executive Director and Adjunct Professor Human Rights Center, UCLA Berkely School of Law. #names #ethicalAI #alexa #amazonalexa #amazon #equity #corporateresponsibility #humanrights #ethics #women #children #girls

    39 min

  2. 07/07/2022

    Special Episode 14: Alexa Ard of the Washington Post at Project Voice 2022

    Special Episode: Alexa Ard of the Washington Post presents her story https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2021/people-named-alexa-name-change-amazon/?itid=ap_alexajulianaard  with a panel discussion moderated by Bradley Metrock.   https://www.iamalexa.org https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/alexa-can-i-have-my-name-back/ #womenhelpingwomen #alexa #amazon #amazoncanwehaveournameback

    48 min

  3. 03/21/2022

    Episode 12 with Bradley Metrock CEO of Project Voice

    Bradley Metrock is CEO of Project Voice, a media and consulting company, and General Partner of Project Voice Capital Partners, a $20M venture capital fund investing in early-stage voice/AI startups. Project Voice 2022 takes place April 25-28 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

    34 min

  4. 12/21/2021

    Episode 11 : Joshua Montgomery - Founder of Mycroft AI

    Episode 11 with Joshua Montgomery, Founder of Mycroft AI, the world's largest leading open source voice assistant One of the few entrepreneurs in the United States to build a gigabit fiber network from scratch, Joshua brings more than 15 years of entrepreneurial experience to the Mycroft project. Joshua’s previous project, Wicked Broadband, has been featured in Wired, ArsTechnica, and Forbes. He is a firm supporter of the open source movement and committed to an open future for AI.

    32 min

  5. 11/29/2021

    Episode 10: Shyamala Prayaga

    As a product manager for the Autonomous Digital Assistant, Shyamala currently leads the company-wide Ford's Autonomous Digital Assistant innovation for voice and chatbots by owning the roadmap and overall vision and working with cross-functional teams to bring that vision to reality. She is a self-driven evangelist for UX and voice technology and recognizes the societal and cultural benefits of voice tech evolution. She possesses the insight and knowledge that comes with experience and leadership from her technical, development, and design roles. Her design and research work is presented nationally and internationally to general and field-specific audiences, and she has 18 years of experience designing for mobile, web, desktop, and smart TV interfaces. Shyamala has more than six years of experience designing voice interfaces for Connected Home Experience, Automotive, and Wearables. Publications: Her work on research into usability, accessibility, speech recognition, multimodal voice user interfaces, and user interfaces for research and educational use cases has been published internationally, and her interviews have been published with several magazines and podcasts, including Forbes, the healthy code, Automotive, and TU-Auto magazines.

    40 min

  6. 11/19/2021

    Episode 9: Alexa W.

    Episode 9 with Alexa W.

    1h 5m

  7. 10/31/2021

    Episode 8: The Voice Spark Live Team Nick Sawka and Emily Banzhaf

    Team from Voice Spark Live - Nick Sawka, Emily Banzhaf About Emily Emily is a conversation designer, voice designer, one of the hosts of Voice Spark Live, and a member of the Open Voice Network, working to develop standards and ethical guidelines for voice experiences. She was part of the winning team of the Digital Assistant Academy's Hackabot. Before transitioning to the voice field, Emily was a professional violinist, performing all over the world with various ensembles. About Nick  Nicholas was recently brought on at Wanderword as their Chief Evangelist. Nick will represent Wanderword in the US in sales, networking, gathering product testers as well as improving the use/onboarding of Fabula, Poptale and entertainment production. Nick found his passion for Alexa back in 2015 when she was first released and was part of the initial Beta program for the device. In 2017 he made the jump to development and has been involved with creating over 400 Alexa Skills. Further, Nicholas has experience with working on and creating Google Actions. In addition to his love for Voice First tech he is an experienced Chief Of Operations with a demonstrated history of working in the military industry, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management from University of Phoenix.

    35 min

  8. 10/19/2021

    Episode 7: A Mother's Voice

    A must listen: One family's story of how the Alexa wake word turned their world upside down. Warning may be sensitive content for a younger audience

    28 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

Both true personal stories & professional field experts worldwide sharing the impact that the Alexa wake word has had. Fields include technology, education, psychology, and more. Young children, teens, and women experiencing severe bullying, sexual harassment, name changes, suicidal ideation, and identity erasure. We will discuss corporate ethics and responsibility, name bombardment, and the choice to use a human name for technology.

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