The Last Interface with Brian Roemmele

VFH Episode 27

In this episode, Teri welcomes Brian Roemmele, the “Oracle of Voice” and the “Modern Day Thomas Edison.

Brian is the consummate Renaissance man. He is a scientist, researcher, analyst, connector, thinker and doer. He is actually credited for having come up with the term “Voice First”. Over the long, winding arc of his career, Brian has built and run payments and tech businesses worked in media, including the promotion of top musicians, and explored a variety of other subjects along the way.

Brian actively shares his findings and observations across fora like Forbes, Huffington Post, Newsweek, Slate, Business Insider, Daily Mail, Inc, Gizmodo, Medium, Quora (An exclusive Quora top writer for: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013), Twitter (quoted and published), Around the Coin (earliest cryptocurrency podcast), Breaking Banks Radio and This Week In Voice on VoiceFirst.fm that surfaces everything from Bitcoin to Voice Commerce.

Key Points from Brian!

The future of Voice: The Last Interface, the Intelligence Amplifier and the Wisdom Keeper

Where Voice Technology is going

The talk he did at the Alexa Conference was dubbed “The Last Interface” and was based on the question “What if?”
The Last Interface refers to the last interface that we will have with technology.
We type to computers because they cannot understand our volition and our intent.
Computers are already intelligent enough with current technology to take a user’s context and present the information that the user is searching for. That’s the premise of The Last Interface.

Intelligence Amplification

Brian presented this idea by searching through history and examining the concept of why we speak (why we developed language).
Humans had to offload memories into archival systems, which became known as writing. Typing is an example of an extension of an archival system. Computers took over that and now we archive in systems and places like websites, Google, PDFs, and others, but it’s still an archival system and it still doesn’t transmit the volition and intent of an individual. The ability of a computer to capture this data is what Brian calls “The Intelligence Amplifier”
Brian doesn’t fully believe in the concept of AI (Artificial Intelligence) because he doesn’t think we can fully define what intelligence is in humans and where it comes from. Therefore, we cannot artificially create it in any way, shape, or form that is human like.
We have been trying to amplify our intelligence by archiving our world and our stories, whether they be allegorical, mythological or “factual”. Factual is as we see it today. All of our facts today will, 1,000 to 10,000 years from now, look allegorical to people because they will not be facts any longer, they will be seen as primitive.
The Intelligence Amplifier takes in everything around us.
Brian believes it will work like this: in this world, with the technology that exists today, from the moment you’re born to the moment you die, there will be a device that will have a camera and a microphone. Assume that it has the highest security you can ever imagine and it never goes on the internet (it has no internet connection). It’s recording everything you’ve ever seen, everything you’ve ever read, every comment you’ve made, every comment you’ve heard, and everything is archived. All those things will be presented to you as the basis of your AI to derive context and to understand not only your paradigm (the sum total of your experiences, good and bad, that define us as human beings), and so it starts amplifying your intelligence.
During his talk at the 2019 Alexa Conference, he pointed out that the human being discards (exformation) over 99% of everything that comes through our senses.
With The Intelligence Amplifier, this data is captured and can be amplified.

The Last Interface with Brian Roemmele

The Wisdom Keeper

When we die, everything is thrown away, but not in the world of The Last Interface… because the next stage is called Your Wisdom Keeper.
Your Wisdom Keeper is important because it is the sum total of all of your experiences, the essence of your experiences. Every human being has some wisdom to contribute to the world.
A person’s Wisdom Keeper will be their testament, who they were.

Holographic Crystal Memory

The breaches of our personal data like emails, pictures, and others, and having that data leaked out to the greater public, will lead to a type of rebellion.
We are made to be private because that creates the dignity of an individual.
The cloud has proven itself to be ineffectual to store even a few emails. Brian is not advocating for storing everything in the cloud, he just advocates that we are going to do it regardless, but hopes that people will be guided on it.
When we have an intelligence amplifier in the wisdom keeper world, the penalty for hacking this non-internet connected device without the permission of an individual will be equivalent to a murder one charge.
With current technology, we can store 15 to 20 years of a person’s life easily. These devices will eventually go smaller.
In the future, we will have holographic crystal memory. Crystalline structures are incredibly stable for holding information over long periods of time. We are can use crystals to create the substrate that allows us to store information.
The sum total of our experiences will be stored in holographic crystal memory because it will sustain over the ages. It is the survival archival system that will have the throughput, bandwidth, and storage system (petabyte capabilities) to store every single waking and sleeping moment of a person’s life.

Listener Questions

Please feel free to join the conversation and answer the following questions. Also, please feel free to ask a question that you would like Brian to answer. I will curate these questions and pose them to Brian during another podcast interview in the near future.

Do you feel that society is ready for what Brian has described? (The Last Interface, The Intelligence Amplifier, and The Wisdom Keeper)
Will we ever be ready for the scenario that Brian is describing?
Will this happen by default (is it already happening)?

Use the Twitter hashtag #VFH27 to tweet your responses to @DrTeriFisher. Also, again, feel free to ask a question and I will curate those questions and ask them to Brian at a future date.