Latest news with #voiceRecognition
National Post
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- National Post
Alberta teacher inspires Jimmy Kimmel to better know his staff — sorta
A southern Alberta teacher has been making waves with a video in which she can recognize her students' voices without seeing them, even inspiring late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel to take a page from her book. Article content 'This is fun . . . It's a cute thing,' Kimmel said on his show Tuesday night, before playing the video showcasing how well Medicine Hat teacher Mackenzie Gill knows her students. Article content Article content Article content In the video, the teacher sits in a chair and 20 or so students line up behind her. Without Gill seeing who is standing behind her chair, each student says, 'Hello, Miss Gill.' The teacher then identifies each of her tiny charges by name — providing a nice boost to their self esteem. Article content Article content 'Well done, Miss Gill,' Kimmel said after sharing the video with his audience. Article content 'I thought it would be fun to do that here with some of my staff,' he continued. Article content Kimmel then played a video in which he tried to do just that. No surprise, he f ailed to identify any of the show's staff nor his own grown son who is a television production assistant. The Kimmel bit was funny, but it was also an ideal way to highlight the work of a teacher who appears sincerely delighted that she knows her own students so well, especially when correctly identifying the voice of a twin. Article content Gill is still a newer teacher, but she has already been making a mark in the teaching world. She was an Edwin Parr Award nominee representing the Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education recently. The award, recognizing excellence by a first-year teacher, is given out by the Alberta School Board Association. Article content In a video for the award, Gill noted she is a kindergarten teacher at Medicine Hat's Ecole St. John Paul II School, where she teaches English and French. Article content 'I've always wanted to be a teacher,' Gill says in the video. 'I haven't thought two seconds about changing my career path at all. I've always wanted to be in the classroom, in front of kids, teaching them and learning more about myself, learning more about them and just making an environment where kids feel loved and included and they can be themselves 100 per cent of the time.' Article content Gill makes a true difference in the school, nurturing francophone culture and global diversity, says the school's acting vice principal Edlyn Murphy. Article content 'From the moment Mackenzie stepped into our school, she brought with her a contagious enthusiasm that ignited a spark in every person she encountered,' said Murphy. 'Her innovative teaching methods have transformed mundane lessons to captivating experiences leaving students eager to learn more about the world beyond their borders.'
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Meet the Briton who helped teach Alexa how to talk
British AI entrepreneur William Tunstall-Pedoe has always been 'motivated by impact'. He started pushing the boundaries on what's possible with machines as a 13-year-old schoolboy, while Tunstall-Pedoe secretly helped create and launch Amazon's (AMZN) Alexa over a decade ago. In between, his anagram technology was used by author Dan Brown for the Da Vinci Code and he even identified the most boring date in history. The first keyboard seeds were sown at Dundee High School in Scotland where he was able to venture to the technical college next door before classes and during breaks to write computer software on its mainframe. There were financial rewards, too. His computer science teacher, Michael Ryan, had a software business which sold by mail order. However there was no taking advantage of the pupils, says Tunstall-Pedoe, with very generous royalties and a decent income on offer. Read More: Meet Britain's 'king of billboards' who sold his business for £1bn 'I kind of very arrogantly set out to try and solve this problem of using language to control machines,' he tells Yahoo Finance UK, 'to automatically answer questions, change the user experience you have when you interact with search engines, when you interact with computer software, and kind of invented some technology to tackle that.' It is 20 years since he started his search and voice recognition company True Knowledge, later called Evi Technologies. Tunstall-Pedoe charts the company as a "10-year adventure", seven as a venture-backed independent start-up before being sold to Amazon in 2012 for a reported £21m and its CEO staying on for over three years. 'When we launched, we were trying to solve the problem of basically using computers by speaking to them or with language,' he recalls. 'When you look at science fiction I watched as a child, Star Trek or Blake's 7, all the computers you just have a chat to. It understands you and is the most natural interface. This is how we interact with people. 'But when you used a computer back then, you select from a menu, click a button or you guess keywords and browse links that come back from the keyword search. So we were tackling the problem of how to use language to interact with machines, which of course is incredibly topical now because large language models (LLMs) have essentially cracked that. But we were doing this way back.' In the mid 2000s, Tunstall-Pedoe would demo his software on conversational search and recalls being told by Google (GOOG) that not only was this a worse customer experience but that keyword search was infinitely better. 'That's definitely not the case now,' says Tunstall-Pedoe, who lives in London and Cambridge, the latter a 'crazy converted church' where Spitting Image was also created. Read More: 'Why we set up a sustainable mobile operator to save people money' Evi pivoted several times as a start-up, from a search engine that answered questions to producing a voice assistant, launching at the same time as Apple's Siri. The 30-strong Cambridge outfit had multiple acquisition offers before working on a secret project for Amazon, now known as Alexa, which went to market in late 2014. He later spent a period as an angel investor backing over 100 tech start-ups before his latest venture, Unlikely AI, came into focus. The British venture, which raised nearly £15m following a seed round in 2023, is currently developing technology that combines LLMs with symbolic methods to make AI safer for companies in sectors such as healthcare to provide verifiable insights. 'How do you enable systems built with modern AI to be fully explainable, auditable, not get you into trouble with regulators, and not lead you to making business decisions that cost you lots of money?' says Tunstall-Pedoe. 'We're tackling some of the biggest problems in AI, which is how to make it completely trustworthy and how to ensure the answer is always accurate.' With the advent of ChatGPT, the inventor has admitted that most companies aren't succeeding when it comes to implementing LLMs, which learns to predict the next word, into workflows. He says: 'If you're making a business decision based on the result of an LLM and your private data, and it gives you a wrong answer, that can be really expensive financially and to your brand. If you're in a regulated industry it can get you fined. You can even get the CEO in jail in extreme cases if you break regulation really badly and this is a fundamental problem.' Read More: We sold a hand cream every 36 seconds after appearing on This Morning Thus Unlikely AI, he adds, was born to not only earn trust but to solve complex issues with its deep learning software. 'That means making it accurate, so when it gives you a result, you can trust it,' says Tunstall-Pedoe. 'Sometimes it may tell you it doesn't know rather than guess and it also means explainability and auditability, to fully explain in a very clear way how the result was created. 'Ultimately, it's also about the customer or business being in control and that's the kind of experience that we're shooting for. We're still relatively early, but we're looking to be very successful and become a very big company.' How I identified the most boring day I built this huge database of millions of facts about the world, where the system could make sense and reason with them. I thought it would be interesting to do an analysis of all the facts that the system knew, and in particular with the goal of finding what the least interesting date in history was — 11 April 1954. The story went so viral that it got told and retold and it's had new life ever since. There was a play in Germany that was kind of themed on it and all sorts of crazy things that have happened as a result of that. Entrepreneurship One of the things I love is that you can have a very significant impact as an individual if you've got an idea and you pursue it. If you build a software product that does something valuable and different, it can scale like no other product can. You can have 100 million users within a couple of months if you create a really successful piece of software, which is kind of almost impossible in almost any other industry. That's what's exciting about it, that potential for big impact if you're developing technology in the software world that really hits home. Read more: The boss who has found 'nature's answer to plastic' Meet the company that finds 'must-haves' to make everyday life easier Impossibrew CEO says Dragons' Den failure sparked alcohol-free brand's riseError in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Meet the Briton who helped teach Alexa how to talk
British AI entrepreneur William Tunstall-Pedoe has always been 'motivated by impact'. He started pushing the boundaries on what's possible with machines as a 13-year-old schoolboy, while Tunstall-Pedoe secretly helped create and launch Amazon's (AMZN) Alexa over a decade ago. In between, his anagram technology was used by author Dan Brown for the Da Vinci Code and he even identified the most boring date in history. The first keyboard seeds were sown at Dundee High School in Scotland where he was able to venture to the technical college next door before classes and during breaks to write computer software on its mainframe. There were financial rewards, too. His computer science teacher, Michael Ryan, had a software business which sold by mail order. However there was no taking advantage of the pupils, says Tunstall-Pedoe, with very generous royalties and a decent income on offer. Read More: Meet Britain's 'king of billboards' who sold his business for £1bn 'I kind of very arrogantly set out to try and solve this problem of using language to control machines,' he tells Yahoo Finance UK, 'to automatically answer questions, change the user experience you have when you interact with search engines, when you interact with computer software, and kind of invented some technology to tackle that.' It is 20 years since he started his search and voice recognition company True Knowledge, later called Evi Technologies. Tunstall-Pedoe charts the company as a "10-year adventure", seven as a venture-backed independent start-up before being sold to Amazon in 2012 for a reported £21m and its CEO staying on for over three years. 'When we launched, we were trying to solve the problem of basically using computers by speaking to them or with language,' he recalls. 'When you look at science fiction I watched as a child, Star Trek or Blake's 7, all the computers you just have a chat to. It understands you and is the most natural interface. This is how we interact with people. 'But when you used a computer back then, you select from a menu, click a button or you guess keywords and browse links that come back from the keyword search. So we were tackling the problem of how to use language to interact with machines, which of course is incredibly topical now because large language models (LLMs) have essentially cracked that. But we were doing this way back.' In the mid 2000s, Tunstall-Pedoe would demo his software on conversational search and recalls being told by Google (GOOG) that not only was this a worse customer experience but that keyword search was infinitely better. 'That's definitely not the case now,' says Tunstall-Pedoe, who lives in London and Cambridge, the latter a 'crazy converted church' where Spitting Image was also created. Read More: 'Why we set up a sustainable mobile operator to save people money' Evi pivoted several times as a start-up, from a search engine that answered questions to producing a voice assistant, launching at the same time as Apple's Siri. The 30-strong Cambridge outfit had multiple acquisition offers before working on a secret project for Amazon, now known as Alexa, which went to market in late 2014. He later spent a period as an angel investor backing over 100 tech start-ups before his latest venture, Unlikely AI, came into focus. The British venture, which raised nearly £15m following a seed round in 2023, is currently developing technology that combines LLMs with symbolic methods to make AI safer for companies in sectors such as healthcare to provide verifiable insights. 'How do you enable systems built with modern AI to be fully explainable, auditable, not get you into trouble with regulators, and not lead you to making business decisions that cost you lots of money?' says Tunstall-Pedoe. 'We're tackling some of the biggest problems in AI, which is how to make it completely trustworthy and how to ensure the answer is always accurate.' With the advent of ChatGPT, the inventor has admitted that most companies aren't succeeding when it comes to implementing LLMs, which learns to predict the next word, into workflows. He says: 'If you're making a business decision based on the result of an LLM and your private data, and it gives you a wrong answer, that can be really expensive financially and to your brand. If you're in a regulated industry it can get you fined. You can even get the CEO in jail in extreme cases if you break regulation really badly and this is a fundamental problem.' Read More: We sold a hand cream every 36 seconds after appearing on This Morning Thus Unlikely AI, he adds, was born to not only earn trust but to solve complex issues with its deep learning software. 'That means making it accurate, so when it gives you a result, you can trust it,' says Tunstall-Pedoe. 'Sometimes it may tell you it doesn't know rather than guess and it also means explainability and auditability, to fully explain in a very clear way how the result was created. 'Ultimately, it's also about the customer or business being in control and that's the kind of experience that we're shooting for. We're still relatively early, but we're looking to be very successful and become a very big company.' How I identified the most boring day I built this huge database of millions of facts about the world, where the system could make sense and reason with them. I thought it would be interesting to do an analysis of all the facts that the system knew, and in particular with the goal of finding what the least interesting date in history was — 11 April 1954. The story went so viral that it got told and retold and it's had new life ever since. There was a play in Germany that was kind of themed on it and all sorts of crazy things that have happened as a result of that. Entrepreneurship One of the things I love is that you can have a very significant impact as an individual if you've got an idea and you pursue it. If you build a software product that does something valuable and different, it can scale like no other product can. You can have 100 million users within a couple of months if you create a really successful piece of software, which is kind of almost impossible in almost any other industry. That's what's exciting about it, that potential for big impact if you're developing technology in the software world that really hits home. Read more: The boss who has found 'nature's answer to plastic' Meet the company that finds 'must-haves' to make everyday life easier Impossibrew CEO says Dragons' Den failure sparked alcohol-free brand's riseSign in to access your portfolio
Globe and Mail
03-06-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Prediction: Investors Are Unlikely to Win With SoundHound AI Stock, and Here's Why
As SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) has developed voice-recognition technology driven by artificial intelligence (AI) that has attracted high-profile clients, more investors have taken an interest in the company. Between that technology and rapid revenue growth, it may look like a stock poised to drive outsize returns. Unfortunately, SoundHound AI continues to deal with challenges that may call its investment case into question. Unless the company can mitigate those challenges, the stock is unlikely to succeed, and here's why. Why investors are tuning into SoundHound AI stock In many respects, SoundHound AI appears to be punching far above its weight. It has developed AI-based voice recognition technology, promoting it as "next-generation AI." With that, its technology can help customers perform tasks via voice prompts. This has drawn the interest of numerous corporate clients, particularly in the automotive industry. Moreover, the company has attracted restaurants, financial services businesses, telecom companies, and others to its platform. Despite its market cap of $4.1 billion, SoundHound AI has successfully earned business while competing with much larger players. It generated $29 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, a 151% increase from year-ago levels. And the company turned a profit in the first quarter, a goal that might have appeared out of reach a year ago quarter. During the quarter, it earned more than $129 million, up from a $33 million loss in the first quarter of 2024. That likely helped boost the stock. After a sell-off at the beginning of the year, it turned higher following the release of the report. Consequently, shares are up by about 115% over the previous 12 months. SoundHound AI's daunting challenges However, investors are likely to find some serious concerns as they look at the stock's financials more closely. The most obvious oddity is that net income was more than four times its revenue. And that occurred at a time when operating expenses for the first quarter were $99 million, which was more than three times the company's revenue in that quarter. It also reported a change in the fair value of contingent acquisition liabilities. This amounted to a $176 million noncash benefit that turned SoundHound AI profitable for the quarter. Hence, when examining the negative free cash flow of $19 million, the "profit" is not as promising as it appears. Currently, the company has almost $246 million in liquidity. This means it can sustain the current pace of negative cash flow for approximately three more years before having to add debt or issue more shares. Furthermore, it competes with numerous companies, including tech heavyweights Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft. All of those companies hold cash positions that far surpass SoundHound's market cap, meaning if one of these companies wants to compete directly, it is in a strong position to take market share from SoundHound AI. Also, even though the business may look like a buyout candidate, Nvidia recently sold its SoundHound AI stock, and no other tech giant has taken a position in the company. Knowing that, the case for the stock may rely too much on hope, which does not put its shareholders in a strong position. Think twice about buying SoundHound AI stock Under current conditions, investors are unlikely to succeed with this stock as a long-term investment. Admittedly, SoundHound AI has developed some compelling voice-driven technology with AI, and that has attracted some of the world's best-known enterprises as clients. Nonetheless, its first-quarter profit came from a one-time benefit, and with operating expenses far outpacing revenue, long-term profitability appears out of reach. Moreover, the company has to compete with some of the world's largest companies, which have plenty of resources. Unless the rapid revenue growth starts to translate into a dramatically improved financial performance, investing in SoundHound AI is unlikely to pay off for investors in the long term. Should you invest $1,000 in SoundHound AI right now? Before you buy stock in SoundHound AI, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and SoundHound AI wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $651,049!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $828,224!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is979% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to171%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Will Healy has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
With SoundHound AI Stock Down 41%, Should You Buy the Dip?
Shares of the voice recognition specialist have plummeted in value this year. But sales are expected to grow by nearly 100% as the overall AI market expands. SoundHound still trades at a hefty multiple, making it suitable only for patient investors. 10 stocks we like better than SoundHound AI › SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) had a terrific 2024. Last year, shares spiked in value by more than 800%. So far in 2025, it's been a different story, with shares losing more than 40% over a span of just five months. And yet when you look at analyst expectations for revenue growth, the picture looks extremely rosy, with 87% sales growth expected this year. Could this be your chance to buy into a high-growth AI stock on the cheap? Yes, but there are two risks you'll want to understand before jumping in. The AI revolution is in full swing. Spending on AI technologies is expected to accelerate in the years to come despite a strong upward trajectory in both 2023 and 2024. According to one estimate, the AI market is expected to grow from around $370 billion in value today to more than $2.4 trillion by 2032. That's a compound annual growth rate of more than 30% for nearly a decade! Companies like SoundHound should benefit immensely from this rise in spending. As its name suggests, SoundHound's business model revolves around sound. More specifically, it has developed a voice AI suite that can help companies integrate voice AI into their own businesses. Drive-thru windows are a prime example, as are customer support lines and in-vehicle personal assistants. SoundHound has already signed on partners including Applebee's, Honda, and Planet Fitness to pilot its technologies in all of these use cases. By integrating AI voice assistants into these verticals, SoundHound believes customers can lower costs while increasing efficiency and customer satisfaction over the long term. SOUN Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts Unsurprisingly, SoundHound's revenue has taken off with the rest of the AI industry. This year, analysts expect sales to jump by nearly 90%. Another 25% jump is expected in 2026. Long term, SoundHound has a large total addressable market. Most estimates believe the voice AI market will be worth somewhere between $40 billion and $50 billion over the next decade, growing at a similar annual rate as the rest of the AI market. With a total sales base of just $102 million, SoundHound should be able to maintain double-digit sales growth for years to come. But before you jump in, make sure you understand the key risks involved. SoundHound should experience heavy growth in the years to come. But the market has already priced in much of this growth. Shares trade at an astounding 42.6 times sales. Plus, the company's research and development budget pales in comparison to better-funded Big Tech competitors. Over the last 12 months, the company has invested just $80 million into R&D. That compares to gigantic multibillion-dollar R&D budgets for Big Tech peers. SOUN PS Ratio data by YCharts Does all of this mean that SoundHound stock is too expensive and that the business will fail in the face of better-financed competitors? Not exactly. The multibillion-dollar research and development budgets commanded by Big Tech competitors largely aren't dedicated to voice AI applications. And the portion that is often isn't meant to compete directly with SoundHound. Apple's Siri assistant, after all, isn't in use at drive-thru windows or customer support lines. Meanwhile, even high upfront valuations can be justified with enough growth. After factoring in the next two years of expected growth, SoundHound would trade at less than 20 times projected sales. That's still pricey, but far less than today's valuation portrays. Should you buy the dip on SoundHound? Only if you're an aggressive growth investor looking for maximum upside. You'll also need an investing horizon longer than your average stock -- think five to 10 years minimum. With a market cap of only $4 billion, SoundHound's upside potential is clear. But investors should expect heavy volatility and the potential for heavy downside. Before you buy stock in SoundHound AI, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and SoundHound AI wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $639,271!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $804,688!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 957% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 167% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025 Ryan Vanzo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple and Planet Fitness. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. With SoundHound AI Stock Down 41%, Should You Buy the Dip? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
