Something You Should Know
Real Solutions for Everyday Anxiety & The Evolution of Talking Computers
Thu, 29 May 2025
It is hard to imagine how intricate and complicated your eyes are. This episode starts with a look at some of the amazing things your eyes do and how they work to allow you to see the world. https://www.buzzfeed.com/acuvue/impossibly-cool-facts-you-may-not-know-about-yo#.kjpwxlkvO Anxiety is a huge problem. It appears more people are more anxious today than ever before. Why is that? What causes anxiety in the first place and more importantly, what can you do to lower your anxiety? Here with some wonderful insight into all of this as well as offering very practical suggestions to reduce anxiety is Martha Beck. She is a Harvard-trained sociologist and speaker who is the author of a book called Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose (https://amzn.to/4dyqWRV) For decades, science fiction has given us various versions of talking computers. And today we have Alexa and Siri that utilize pretty cool technology that allows you to speak a question and hear an answer back. But talking machines go back a long time and their history is fascinating. And what is the future of talking computers and machines? Have they reached their potential or is there more to come? Listen to my guest Sarah A. Bell. She is a writer and professor who studies the impact of information technologies on the world. She is author of the book, Vox ex Machina: A Cultural History of Talking Machines (https://amzn.to/4k8FfyU) We all know the importance of frequent handwashing. Still there are a few things many of us unknowingly get wrong that can put us at risk of catching or spreading germs. Listen as I explain what they are. https://www.foxnews.com/health/biggest-handwashing-mistakes-could-increase-germs-viruses PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! MINT MOBILE: Ditch overpriced wireless and get 3 months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month at https://MintMobile.com/something ! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING ROCKET MONEY: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster! Go to https://RocketMoney.com/SOMETHING QUINCE: Elevate your shopping with Quince! Go to https://Quince.com/sysk for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! DELL: The power of Dell AI with Intel inside is transforming the world of pro sports! For the players and the fans who are there for every game. See how Dell Technologies with Intel inside can help find your advantage, and power your wins at https://Dell.com/Wins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What fascinating things can your eyes do?
I mean, that's an excellent question. I do history. I've never considered myself much of a futurist, but history can tell us something about the patterns that we can expect to see. If we look back at the history of both speech synthesis and speech recognition, one of the threads of research
happened to be for the purpose of creating a text to speech machine for folks who were blind or maybe had disabilities of their speech organs or something like that. And so there certainly are incredible uses for folks who who need to interact with computers in certain ways. And of course, most of us need to interact with computers in this day and age.
But as many things go, the thrust of development is always towards things that you can make money off of. And so a lot of those applications, of course, are consumer applications like Alexa. Interestingly, I don't know if people can even remember back this far, but right before ChatGPT went public, am Ende von, was war das, 2022, hat Amazon ihren Alexa-Team größtenteils gesperrt.
Und das war ein Teil davon, weil ich denke, und das ist einfach, ich weiß nicht, es gibt ein bisschen Forschung darüber, aber wir wissen, dass die Leute es meistens benutzen, wie du gesagt hast, um den Zeitpunkt zu fragen, um es Musik zu spielen, um es zu fragen, was das Wetter war, vielleicht um zu fragen, ob es Stockquote gibt, aber nichts, was Amazon wirklich wert war.
But then we got large language models in the public. And so in the last two years, there's been a push again to make speech the interface of our interactions with those large language models. And I don't know where that will take us, to be honest.
but we see kind of the same things recur that have recurred for the last 60, 70 years, and that we've been told they are the answer to things like a lot of our health-related issues, so promoting elder care and that kind of thing, or our educational issues, so to make education more... Interactive with children using these kinds of programs.
And this is supposed to offload labor from people like teachers and nurses and so on and so forth. I'm a little skeptical. You might hear that in my voice. I'm a little skeptical about some of those applications. But I will say that with computing, with eras of computing, we've actually seen those promises over and over again since the 1950s.
Nun, wie du sagst, wenn du nicht Geld dafür bekommst, ist es nicht so wichtig, es zu entwickeln. Aber weil es eine Stimme ist, weil es die menschliche Stimme synthetisiert, scheint es da ein bisschen Potenzial zu haben, oder?
Therapie, zum Beispiel, durch Chatbots. Das ist auch etwas, das bis in die 60er-Jahre zurückgegangen ist, das eine Menge Kontroversie verursacht hat, um deinen Therapeuten nicht ein Computerprogramm zu sein, sondern eher als eine Person. Aber ich denke, sie werden es wahrscheinlich immer weiterarbeiten. Wir sehen viel Hype darüber, People having relationships with these chatbots.
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