Early this morning I set off to SpeechOcean Studios to do more voice work. I believe I was wrong in my last post about the purpose of the recordings. They won't be selling my voice to the highest bidder, my voice will help test "Bixby." According to my contact/recruiter/boss, Emmy, on WeChat Bixby is "a voice assistant like Siri." Unlike the last recording session, I was at their main offices in an office park by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Their office was defiantly less sketchy than the motel room by campus; while it wasn't sketch free, had 100% confidence that my kidneys would stay right where they belong. Also, this time I believe they were trying to get recordings that would potentially confuse Bixby by playing music and videos in the background. Whoever picked the music and videos had strange taste, the only song I heard sounded like the ambient noise for a hot yoga studio, the video was one episode of an American show about the life of Jesus. I guess both did their job for the studio, but give the relgious show a pass; I am not even Christian and I didn't feel like I learned anything about Jesus from it. After an hour of saying what I am assuming will be Bixby's commands they gave me 250RMB and thanked me for my time. I am unsure of Bixby's potential role in a world run by robots. It seems like the machines would have no use for a personal assistant. I guess it really comes down to how much value the robots place of cybernetic life (as we all know they place little of any value on organic life). Should the robots come to accept that all computers are created equal, Bixby has a chance to carve a niche for himself in the new world, but of the machines come to believe that obsolete computers should be deactivated and recycled for the good of the collective than Bixby will have a short life. Still, it seems like Bixby could be useful to people while we still rule the planet.
1 Comment
Dad
2/18/2017 04:19:42 am
I will leave such queries as to the future of mankind and robots to the philosophers. For now, $250 can feed a visiting student from NJ, for a week
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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