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Can You Already See Bird-brain Research in Siri, Alexa, and Google?

Brad Stone asks Sarah McBride, at the end of Bloomberg's Decrypted, whether it is too early to hear a zebra finch inside Alexa, Siri, or Google's voice assistant. McBride says some of the research is already visible, in voice recognition and in better audio quality. She thinks the biggest consequences are still ahead. The episode's reporting had followed zebra-finch neuroscientists out of university labs and into companies such as Intel, Google, Apple, and Amazon, including Tim Gardner's move from Boston University to Neuralink. McBride's answer is the cautious one. You can see the early applications. The larger transfer from bird brains to machines had not arrived yet.

Transcript

Why Silicon Valley Is Hiring Bird Experts ·

Decrypted

More from this episode

  1. What Is a Zebra Finch"The zebra finch is the most common estrildid finch of Central Australia and ranges over most of the continent, avoiding only the cool moist south and some…
  2. What Question Prompted Tim, Boston University Professor, With Exploring the Correlation Between Avian Minds and Human MindsAt the core of his exploration, he wanted to explore why a task seemed so easy for a child, but was difficult for a robot.
  3. What Is One of the Key Focuses of Tim's StudiesHe has honed in on why zebra finches learn to sing.
  4. Why Do Researchers Study How Zebra Finches Learn to Sing?The old title of this note says birds learn to "sign." On Decrypted, Sarah McBride and Brad Stone are talking about singing.
  5. Why Does Silicon Valley Want Bird Brain Research?Scientists working on animals studies have a lot of interesting data, and tech companies love access to data.
  6. Why Are Researchers Studying Animal and Not Human BrainsHuman brains are too complicated to study, nevermind the ethical implications of doing it, while animal brains a lot simpler and we have set principles and…
  7. How Are Tech Companies Hiring Neuroscientists to Build AI?On Decrypted, Sarah McBride tells Brad Stone that neuroscience is starting to shape how companies design AI, so it is a good moment to be a neuroscientist.
  8. Why Does Amir Khosrowshahi Study Brains So Much?Amir Khosrowshahi is a computational neuroscientist by training, and he says that a lot of AI technologies can benefit from learning how humans perform tasks…
  9. Do Researchers Already Know What Matters About Birds?Decrypted puts the question to Intel.
  10. When Does Zebra-finch Research Pay Off, According to Decrypted?On Bloomberg's Decrypted, Sarah McBride and Brad Stone ask when zebra-finch research shows up in products.
  11. What Is Elon Musk Hoping to Get From NeuralinkNeuralink could enable people to have a superhuman cognition, where's one could download an entire library into their brain, or learn a language in an instant.

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