Inventing Alexa with Jeff Adams of Cobalt Speech

10/09/18 • 26 min

In this episode, Teri welcomes Jeff Adams, CEO of Cobalt Speech & Language, and often labelled “The Alexa Inventor”, to discuss how Amazon created the Alexa Voice Service.

Welcome Jeff Adams!

Jeff Adams has been involved with speech technology in one way or another for over 24 years. He got his start by working for a small speech-technology company in Boston, and through a series of acquisitions, ended up working at Nuance, the company behind the successful speech-recognition app Dragon. He left Nuance in 2009 to join a voice-message transcription start-up. That was a turning point. The start-up got Amazon’s attention when they found out the start-up’s technology could match the accuracy of human transcribers. Amazon acquired them and and put them to work on what would become Alexa.

How do you feel about Jeff Adams being labeled Alexa’s creator?

Amazon already had a vision for what they wanted.

Jeff says he did not invent Alexa. When Amazon got him and his team to Seattle, they explained, behind closed doors and in quiet voices, the ideas behind what would become the Echo. Amazon already had a vision for what they wanted.

Jeff’s first response was, “This is not possible”. According to him, the technology just wasn’t far along enough to allow it. At that time, the Echo’s speaker only worked if you were no more than 5 feet away from it. Amazon wanted it to work across a room. The main problem was that as we speak our voices are carried through different paths; it rarely follow a direct line. It bounces off walls and screens, and basically any surface reverberates and then reaches the other person, or in this case, the speaker. Jeff points out that, unlike machines, our brains are naturally good at picking up and merging all these signals into a coherent sound.

Jeff and his team apologized to Amazon, letting them know that they had wasted their money acquiring the start-up. But Amazon persisted and wanted the team to continue trying. The team working on project Doppler, the Echo’s code-name, quickly grew to around 60 people with talent from all over the world. The project ended up taking three years instead of one.

Jeff recounts how Amazon had a house set up to test it. They would invite people to try it out, while the Echo laid safely hidden behind a screen. There were no mentions of Amazon or the Echo, and people were not told what the recordings of their voices would be used for, adding to the secrecy, and excitement, of the future product.

Why did you decide to leave Amazon?

Jeff says it was nothing personal. He loved everyone in the Alexa team. It was a matter of logistics. It was a two-hour commute from where he lived, in and out of Boston. Jeff also says he was managing teams in Germany, California and England, so he was constantly on the road. He could not keep it up for that long. It was too much of a drain. He left one week after the Echo launched.

With his new company, Jeff says, he hopes to help companies that do not have an astronomical budget but that still want to experiment with voice and speech technology. He started Cobalt in 2014 and they are now a team of more than 30 scientists and engineers helping deliver speech and voice solutions to up-and-coming companies.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Teri welcomes Jeff Adams, CEO of Cobalt Speech & Language, and often labelled “The Alexa Inventor”, to discuss how Amazon created the Alexa Voice Service.

Welcome Jeff Adams!

How do you feel about Jeff Adams being labeled Alexa’s creator?

Amazon already had a vision for what they wanted.

Why did you decide to leave Amazon?

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Amazon Alexa Skill Development with Bob Stolzberg of VoiceXP

Skill Design, VUI, Voice User Interface Tips and Tricks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Alexa in Education with Aparna and Deepak Ramanathan

In this episode, Teri welcomes Deepak and Dr. Aparna Ramanathan, co-founders of Ask My Class. Ask My Class is a company that produces Alexa skills for education, and helps teachers, parents and kids thrive through the use of Amazon Echos in the classroom. If you have an interest in education and voice-first technology, this episode is for you!

Dr. Aparna Ramanathan is a critical care medical doctor from Australia. When she moved to the United States, she changed her focus to child health and well being. She saw voice technology as a way to help with emotional regulation in children at home and in the classroom.

Deepak Ramanathan is in engineering, and has had product and marketing roles at Google. He has also spent time on education teams within Google.

Key points from Aparna and Deepak Ramanathan about Education and Voice-First Tech

Aparna likes that there is a way for children to use technology that is screen-free.
Voice is a very natural form of interaction for children.

Ask My Class

Ask My Class is an Alexa skill that provides teachers on-tap, easily accessible prompts and activities wherever they are in the classroom.
It is available in Canada!
Teachers view the Amazon Echo device as an extra set of hands in the classroom.
The Ask My Class skill is a communal experience that students can share.
The skill was piloted last year in elementary classrooms. This year there is a pilot focusing on early learning.
There are an estimated 10000-15000 Echos in classrooms currently.
Echos are introduced by teachers to their classes similar to the way iPads or computers are introduced, with specific rules and policies about how students are allowed to use the devices.
Some activities help students to learn emotional regulation techniques.
There has been good feedback from teachers that Alexa helps to develop teamwork and social skills.
The Alexa skill can be customized with class lists, morning briefings, quizzes, and other features.
A web application can be used by the teacher that can setup the skill to his/her liking. This can also be shared with other teachers/classes.
Ask My Class helps teachers to build engaging, exciting learning environments in the classroom in a way that is easy, accessible and communal.
Future plans are to add scheduling features and to further develop the abilities to share features with other teachers.
Amazon Echo devices are ideally placed to help with learning languages in the classroom; there are plans to include this in the future as well.
Education and voice technology is a very exciting space.