[Webinale] Voice: The New Frontend

Transcript

1. Voice: The New Frontier Frontend Nara Kasbergen (@xiehan) #webinale Thursday, December 10, 2020
2. What is NPR? a nationwide network of public radio stations
3. Why voice? Then: Now:
5. What we're covering today 1. Vision of the future 2. How we got here 3. Where we are today 4. How to build for voice today 5. Lessons learned
6. Vision of the future 1
11. Prediction: In the future, we will all be voice developers.
12. How we got here 2
13. Natural Language Processing definition: the ability of a computer program to understand human language as it is spoken. NLP is a component of artificial intelligence (AI). (source) circa 1960 first major advances in the 1980s
14. Machine Learning (ML) definition: Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can access data and use it to learn for themselves. (source) circa 1950s first major advances in the 1980s
15. https:/ /hackernoon.com/moores-law-is-alive-and-well-adc010ea7a63
16. 1994 IBM Simon is the world's first smart phone 1987 2009 Microsoft begins work on Cortana 2010 Siri launches as a standalone iOS app, later acquired by Apple 2012 Google Now Apple's Knowledge Navigator
17. 2015 Amazon Alexa Skills Kit launches (June) 2014 2016 Google Assistant (May) + Google Home (November) 2017 Cortana Skills Kit (May) + Samsung Bixby (August) 2018 Apple HomePod (February) Amazon Echo launches November 6
18. Rise of multimodal devices
19. Where we are today 3
20. The major players
21. The state at the end of 2019
22. Predictions for 2021
23. The request/response flow Your code request response
24. The request/response flow Your code request response P.S. all the NLP and ML happens here
25. Voice for the web Web Speech API: • Speech recognition • Speech synthesis (TTS) W3C Community specification was published in 2012 SpeechRecognition interface currently only supported in Chrome, experimental feature Uses Google's servers to convert speech to text (requires Internet connection)
26. Mozilla CommonVoice "Common Voice is Mozilla's initiative to help teach machines how real people speak." (source) * In maintenance mode since August 2020 Publicly open dataset Upload recordings of your voice Help reduce bias in Natural Language Processing (NLP) & ML
27. Mozilla Scout Mycroft Open source alternatives
28. The enterprise voice space NLP/ML/AI Consumer applications
29. How to build for voice today 4
30. disclaimer it's not about the code
31. The stack • node.js • serverless (AWS Lambda or Google Cloud Functions) • lightweight database (e.g. Amazon DynamoDB) • CI server of choice (e.g. Travis, Jenkins, etc.) • unit testing framework of choice (e.g. Jest) • TypeScript…?
32. Use the official SDKs Alexa node.js SDK: github.com/alexa/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs Actions on Google node.js SDK: github.com/actions-on-google/actions-on-google-nodejs
33. Glossary Alexa Google / Dialogflow skill action / agent invocation name intent slot entity sample utterance training phrase
34. “Alexa, ask NPR to play the latest news”
35. “Alexa, ask NPR to play the latest news” invocation name
36. “Alexa, ask NPR what's playing”
37. “Alexa, ask NPR what's playing” “Alexa, ask NPR what am I listening to?”
38. “Alexa, ask NPR what's playing” “Alexa, ask NPR what am I listening to?” intent sample utterance sample utterance
39. “Alexa, ask NPR to play Planet Money” “Alexa, ask NPR to play Hidden Brain”
40. “Alexa, ask NPR to play Planet Money” “Alexa, ask NPR to play Hidden Brain” intent slot (or entity)
41. Basic code architecture JSON event with intent name and optional slot(s) Handler function mapped to that intent Use SDK to produce a response with speech, audio, etc.
42. Alexa "Hello World" skill
43. Alexa "Hello World" skill
44. Alexa "Hello World" skill
45. Alexa "Hello World" skill
46. Google "Hello World" action
47. Google "Hello World" action
48. Next, add more features Simple • Launch requests • Add intents • Wait for response • Handle slots • Add images to cards • Play simple audio • Use SSML Medium • User login (OAuth2) • Persistent data • State management • Contexts (Google) • Dialog management (Alexa) • Advanced audio (Alexa) Advanced • Customize display on visual devices • Monetization / transactions • Request user permissions • Notifications • Internationalization
49. Publishing a skill/action • By default, skills in development are only available to you • Certification process similar to mobile app store submissions ◦ ~48-hour turnaround on average ◦ Feedback is unpredictable! ◦ Respect existing brands • Can share a "beta" version with co-workers, friends, etc. ◦ Great for QA as well as hobby projects
50. Get started without code Alexa: • Alexa Skill Blueprints Google: • Actions on Google Templates
51. Lessons learned 5
52. The challenges • The code is not hard • What is hard: ◦ Learning about the platform limitations ◦ Managing stakeholder expectations ◦ Understanding & changing user behaviors ◦ QA • It's not just an engineering challenge!
53. Prediction: In the future, we will all be voice developers.
54. Thank you! Keep in touch: @xiehan nara@nara.codes