Join us on Two Voice Devs as we chat with Xavi, Head of Cloud Infrastructure at Voiceflow, about the exciting new Voiceflow Functions feature and the future of conversational AI development. Xavi shares his journey into the world of bots and assistants, dives into the technology behind Voiceflow's infrastructure, and explains how functions empower developers to create custom, reusable components for their conversational experiences. Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:49 Xavi's journey into ...
Mar 14, 2024•27 min
In this episode of Two Voice Devs, Allen Firstenberg and Roger Kibbe explore the rising trend of local LLMs, smaller language models designed to run on personal devices instead of relying on cloud-based APIs. They discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, focusing on data privacy, control, cost efficiency, and the unique opportunities it presents for developers. They also delve into the importance of fine-tuning these smaller models for specific tasks, enabling them to excel in ...
Mar 07, 2024•51 min•Season 1Ep. 185
Join Allen and Mark on Two Voice Devs as they dive into the world of Large Action Models (LAMs) and explore their potential to revolutionize how we build chatbots and voice assistants. Inspired by Braden Ream's article "How Large Action Models Work and Change the Way We Build Chatbots and Agents," the discussion dissects the core functions of conversational AI - understand, decide, and respond - and examines how LAMs might fit into this framework. Allen and Mark also compare and contrast LAMs wi...
Mar 01, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 184
Google's Gemini 1.5 is here, boasting a mind-blowing 1 million token context window! 🤯 Join Allen and Linda as they dive deep into this experimental AI, exploring its capabilities, limitations, and potential use cases. 🤔 They share their experiences testing Gemini 1.5 with original content, including Two Voice Devs transcripts and synthetic videos, and discuss the challenges of finding data that hasn't already been used to train the AI. 🧐 Get ready for a lively discussion on hallucinations, t...
Feb 23, 2024•45 min•Season 1Ep. 183
In this episode of Two Voice Devs, hosts Allen Firstenberg and Mark Tucker discuss Gemini, Google's latest name for its Generative AI... stuff. Originally known as separate products including Bard and Duet AI, Gemini encompasses a suite of AI tools, including chatbots, product-specific assistants, models, and APIs that developers can use for various tasks. The discussion covers how Gemini compares with offerings from other companies such as OpenAI and Microsoft, including visible similarities an...
Feb 09, 2024•19 min•Season 1Ep. 182
In this episode of Two Voice Devs, hosts Allen Firstenberg and Mark Tucker discuss the CSS Speech Module Level 1 Candidate Recommendation Draft, a standard that enables webpages to talk, developed in collaboration with the voice browser activity. They explore its features including the 'aural' box model concept, voice families, earcons and more, drawing parallels with SSML and highlight its innovative approach to web accessibility complementing screen readers. Despite acknowledging its potential...
Feb 02, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 181
Forget Apps! Talking to this Orange Cube Could Change Everything Is the app model broken? The creators of Rabbit R1, a new voice-first device, certainly think so. In this episode of Two Voice Devs, Mark and Allen break down this innovative device and its potential to change how we interact with technology. What do developers think about the technology underlying RabbitOS? You may be surprised! Key topics: 00:02:00 - What is the Rabbit R1? Rabbit R1 is a new type of device that prioritizes voice ...
Jan 29, 2024•47 min•Season 1Ep. 180
In this episode of 'Two Voice Devs', hosts Allen Firstenberg and Mark Tucker discuss updates made to Alexa Presentation Language (APL) version 2023.3. They highlight conditional imports, updates made for animations, and more, including APL support for different devices and how to "handle" backward compatibility. Learn More: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/alexa-presentation-language/apl-latest-version.html 00:08 Introduction and Welcome 00:17 Alexa Presentation Language (APL) Overv...
Jan 12, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 179
In their New Year's discussion, Mark and Allen explore their hopes and predictions for technological advancements in 2024. They discuss the future of Large Language Models (and if that's the right name for them now), expressing anticipation for improvements in latency issues and the potential for models to be hosted on devices rather than cloud-based platforms. The conversation also ventures into the world of AI agents, function calling, and the importance of developers in ensuring safety measur...
Jan 05, 2024•30 min•Season 1Ep. 178
Allen Firstenberg and Mark Tucker, hosts of Two Voice Devs, reflect on the year 2023, discussing significant changes and trends in the #VoiceFirst and #GenerativeAI industry and where their predictions from last year were accurate... or fell short. They discuss the transformation and challenges Amazon faced, gleaning predictions from hints at large language models (LLMs) from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. They also mention the shift of Voiceflow towards LLMs and recall the notion of retr...
Dec 29, 2023•22 min•Season 1Ep. 177
Mark and Allen get into the Tech-mas spirit, with a little help from Bard. Hoping you all have the happiest of holiday seasons. #GenerativeAI #VoiceFirst #ConversationalAI #HappyHolidays
Dec 21, 2023•4 min•Season 1Ep. 176
In this in-depth chat between Allen Firstenberg and Linda Lawton, they dive into the functionalities and potential of Google's newly released Gemini model. From their initial experiences to exciting possibilities for the future, they discuss the Gemini Pro and Gemini Pro Vision models, how to #BuildWithGemini, its focus on both text and images, and speedier and more cohesive responses compared to older models. They also delve into its potential for multi-modal support, unique reasoning capabilit...
Dec 15, 2023•42 min•Season 1Ep. 175
Join Allen Firstenberg and guest host Noble Ackerson, at the Voice and AI 2023 conference. They discuss the growth of AI and how LLM (large language models) are affecting the tech world and delve deep into topics like LangChain, generative AI, and how to optimize AI operations to tackle network latency. There are also plenty of audience questions, exploring the current challenges in AI and potential solutions. 00:03 Introduction and Background of Two Voice Devs 00:31 The Evolution of Voice Techn...
Dec 08, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 178
Join Mark Tucker and Allen Firstenberg on Thanksgiving Day for a sincere heart-to-heart on the highs and lows of their tech industry journey. Expressing their gratitude for their family, friends, and colleagues in the tech industry and beyond, they acknowledge the challenging times faced by many. They call on their viewers to remember how unique and important they are and invite them to express their thoughts and emotions openly by reaching out to them. 00:04 Introduction and Thanksgiving Greeti...
Nov 23, 2023•9 min•Season 1Ep. 173
Mark Tucker and Allen Firstenberg delve into the recent changes made by VoiceFlow. We explore how VoiceFlow, originally a design resource for Alexa Skills and Google Assistant Actions, has evolved and shifted to include chatbot roles and generative AI responses. Highlighted too are the implications of VoiceFlow's decoupling and transition to 'bot logic as a service'. We look at the necessary technical adjustments and solutions required in the aftermath of these changes, and Mark shares how he cr...
Nov 16, 2023•26 min•Season 1Ep. 172
On this episode, Mark Tucker and Allen Firstenberg dive deep into the latest announcements by OpenAI. They discuss various developments including the launch of GPTs (collections of prompts and documents with configuration settings), the new text-to-speech model, upcoming GPT-4 Turbo, reproducible outputs, and the introduction of the Assistant API. While they express excitement for what these developments could mean for #VoiceFirst, #ConversationAI, and #GenerativeAI, they also voice concerns abo...
Nov 10, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 171
Allen and Mark discuss the practical uses and advantages offered by MakerSuite, an API currently available for Google's PaLM #GenerativeAI model. We look at its unique feature that treats prompts like templates, allowing for versatile manipulation of these templates for varying results. We further delve into how it saves these prompts in Google Drive and how this can be linked to LangChain's new hub concept, leading to an effective 'MakerSuite hub.' Finally, we explore if prompts are more like c...
Nov 02, 2023•18 min•Season 1Ep. 170
Mark and Allen explore TypeChat - a new library from Microsoft that makes prompt engineering for function-like operations in #ConversationalAI easier and more robust. Is this a replacement for Intents? Does it go beyond what we could do with Intent-based systems? Is it lacking something? Let's explore! Learn more: https://github.com/microsoft/TypeChat
Nov 02, 2023•28 min•Season 1Ep. 169
What started as a casual conversation between Mark and Allen turned into a brief exploration of what Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) means in the #GenerativeAI and #ConversationalAI world. Toss in some discussion about VoiceFlow and Google's Vertex AI Search and Conversation and we have another dive into the current hot method to bridge the Fuzzy Human / Digital Computer divide.
Oct 20, 2023•14 min•Season 1Ep. 168
Last week, before Google's annual hardware event, Allen teased part of his prediction about Google Assistant and Bard. This week, we'll show the full clip of Allen's prediction and see just how close he was. Then Mark and Allen discuss how recent announcements from OpenAI, Amazon Alexa, and Google compare to each other and, more important, what they each mean for developers in a #GenerativeAI, #ConversationalAI, and perhaps even a #VoiceFirst world, and perhaps make a few more predictions and wh...
Oct 12, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 167
The Google Cloud Next conference is a massive display of the latest technologies and products available from Google Cloud - from AI to Zero-Trust solutions. Unsurprisingly, #MachineLearning was prominent in this years show, so Mark and Allen take a look at some of the biggest #GenerativeAI and #ConversationalAI announcements this year. More info: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/google-cloud-next/next-2023-wrap-up
Oct 06, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 166
Mark shares the exciting news that Amazon Alexa will soon have a #VocieFirst #ConversationalAI LLM chat mode! While Allen agrees that this is very exciting news, he still has quite a few questions about how #GenerativeAI technology will fit into Alexa skills. We ask the difficult questions and see what answers are currently out there. What do you think about this announcement from Alexa? More info: LLM feature description: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/blogs/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/2023/09/a...
Sep 28, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 165
Noble and Allen take a look back at our experiences at this years VOICE + AI conference. What were the big topics being discussed? The amusing moments? And what do we want to see next year? #GenerativeAI #ConversationalAI #VoiceFirst
Sep 26, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 164
Allen and guest host Linda have a wide ranging conversation, from Linda's career path and her experiences as a Google Developer Expert for Google Analytics, to how she leveraged that knowledge while trying out something new with Google's #GenerativeAI tool, MakerSuite and the PaLM API. We take a close look at how developers can use prompts (more than one!) to help turn a user's request into actionable data structures that feed into an API and get results. More from Linda: https://LindaLawton.DK ...
Sep 13, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 163
We're just days away from the annual VOICE+AI conference, hosted this year in Washington, DC. Both Allen and Noble will be speaking (and hosting a live and in person recording of a future episode!), so we'll give a little preview of what you can hear if you're attending.
Sep 01, 2023•28 min•Season 1Ep. 162
Allen and Mark revisit a conversation from episode 146 where they discovered Google had a Vector Database. Now, several months later, Allen has done some work with the Google Cloud Vertex AI Matching Engine and incorporated it into LangChain JS. We discuss why this is important, and how it fits into the overall landscape of LLMs and MLs today. (And Allen has a little announcement towards the end.) More info: * Matching Engine: https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/matching-engine/overview * La...
Aug 24, 2023•27 min•Season 1Ep. 161
This seems like an easy question, right? If you want to do #ConversationalAI or #GenerativeAI on your own machine with a model such as Llama 2, you can just download the model and... well... then what? This is the question posed to guest host Noble Ackerson - and the answer was both more complicated and simpler than Allen could imagine!
Aug 17, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 160
Amazon has made some changes to the Alexa Presentation Language, dubbing this version 2023.2, and Allen is a bit confused about what these updates bring. Mark, however, clarifies what's new, how it relates to what was previously available, and why some users can benefit from this latest APL release.
Aug 10, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 159
One of the neat features we've seen come out of the #GenerativeAI and #ConversationalAI explosion recently has been the attention being paid to text embeddings and how they can be used to radically change how we index and search for things. Allen, however, has recently been working with an image embedding model from Google, including incorporating it into LangChain JS. Mark asks about what that process was like, what this new model lets us do, and starts to explore some of the potential of this ...
Aug 03, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 158
Three years of Two Voice Devs! There's no doubt that the #VoiceFirst industry has changed over that time, with the rise of #GenerativeAI and #ConversationalAI taking the world by storm. Mark and Allen look back at how the show has evolved over this time, and why we hope you'll be joining us as we continue forward on our journey!
Jul 27, 2023•18 min
