TechMates – Navigating The AI Landscape
Welcome to the RSBC Unseen podcast focusing on AI.
On this episode, Alex and Juliette dive into the pros and cons of AI apps for blind users. They talk about different apps and how they’re integrating them in their daily lives. They also chat about how AI could potentially improve the lives of blind and partially sighted in the near future.
Don’t forget to let us know your thoughts by getting in touch at youth.forum@rsbc.org.uk.
Listen to the episode
Transcript
Alex 0:13
Hello, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. You might remember my voice. It’s been such a long time since I recorded a podcast. Yes, this one is going to be a tech podcast. It’s going to be called Tech Mates, which is a new podcast. And the reason why it’s called Tech mates? Well, my guess Juliette will explain what it means. Hi, Juliette.
Juliette 0:37
Hi, I’m so happy to be here! So it’s called Tech Mates because Alex and I are mates and we like to talk about tech. We’ve been friends for a while and now I work at RSBC, so we thought let’s jump on and do a tech podcast together.
Alex 0:54
One important question. Are you any good at chess?
Juliette 0:58
No, no.
Alex 0:59
Okay. We just chose the name because it sounded okay.
Juliette 1:04
Yeah, that is how I came up with it. I was like, What rhymes with mates and tech? And I was like, oh, checkmate, Tech Mates! And no, I don’t play chess, at all, so, you know.
Alex 1:14
Yeah, that’s the history of the name, it’s not that deep. Such a smart one. It took us ages to come up with a name and I’m quite proud of it.
Juliette 1:25
We even tried asking chat GPT for names and it was not helpful to be honest.
Alex 1:31
Yeah. What was the suggestion like from the AI?
Juliette 1:35
Oh my God, they were so bland. They’ve just fallen out my head. I think wasn’t there that weird one Like “Seeing Pioneers”? I was like, that was a lot. That was a lot.
Alex 1:46
Yes, and this episode – our first episode’s going to be about AI, because AI is like the new innovation. And it’s been around for almost a year now. I think it came out in November, chat GPT anyways, of last year. So it’s been a year. So it’s a good time to just talk about it and talk about how it has improved over the year and where it’s going in the future; chat GPT and ‘Be My AI’. It’s really hard to say actually.
Read MoreJuliette 2:14
It is really hard to say, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s.
Alex 2:16
Yeah, it’s a bit of a mouthful.
Juliette 2:19
I feel like you have to over annunciate, like “Be My AI”.
Alex 2:23
Yes, ‘Be My AI’. So before we start the episode, let’s talk about who we are. So, do you wanna go first?
Juliette 2:27
Oh, sure, yeah. So hi again, I’m Juliette, And I am the engagement officer here at RSBC. I am a blind tech user. So I use screen readers on my laptop. I’m also a braille user. So I like a like a Braille display. I have an iPhone that I use with Voiceover as well. So that’s kind of how I interact with technology.
Alex 2:52
And I’m Alex. I teach technology here. So I have to use different types of technology. But like Juliette I’m sort of like using mainly using iPhones and screen reader, I use NVDA. And I play around with other stuff because it’s part of my job. So that’s what I do here. Let’s get started with the first episode of Tech Mates, AI. Yeah, the first thing we want to talk about is Be My AI. So for those who doesn’t know what it is, it’s ‘Be My Eyes’. Which is quite a popular app that came out a really long time ago now. ‘Be My Eyes’ is the app and ‘Be My AI’ is a feature within the app. So what it does, it uses – it’s powered by chat GPT as well, Open AI. And you take a picture or you have a picture already taken, and you get artificial intelligence to describe it. We’re going to show you a quick demo later on. But that’s how it’s like. I was originally on the beta programme. I’m still on the beta programme now. So I’ve been using it for like, oh, about six months now I think. How long have you been using it Juls?
Juliette 4:01
I, I don’t tend to bother with beta stuff. I’m just like, I’ll use it when it’s out and it’s like here to stay, and they’ve kind of ironed out most of the kinks. So I’ve only had it for a few weeks. But I do remember you Alex, sending me like a video demo that you’d done of a photo that you’d taken of us from my birthday party. So I thought that was really cool. So I was really excited for it to come out like more generally. I’ve mostly been using it to describe photos of my cat to me, but I’ve enjoyed it a lot. So it’s Yeah, I’m sure I’ll find more practical uses for it soon. But it’s got such potential. I was so excited when I saw it. I’ve been waiting for it to come out like out of beta for ages. So I’m really excited to see like, what I grab my phone to use it for.
Alex 4:50
Yeah, I’ve been promoting the heck out of it. When I first joined the programme, I was like, Oh, this is so cool!. I’ll tell everyone about it. So I was demonstrating it with partners and stuff like “check out this app”. Obviously before we had very basic ones, like ‘Tap Tap See’, so we are like spoiled right now. Because before we was like “Oh, it told me about my hair colour!” or “it told me her age!” and we try everything but no, it was so exciting.
Juliette 5:18
It nearly got my age right! It was within five years of my actual age!
Alex 5:23
Yeah, so close! this is the future! But no, this just blows it out of the water. Right?
Juliette 5:28
But I guess we should maybe flag some of the potential downsides, because it is not perfect. And that’s why it’s been in beta for so long. So I suppose some things that I’ve seen is if you start using it, it will give you a little warning, like, you know, don’t, you know, can be wrong, don’t rely on it for things like medication. And they’re very, like, careful to be like, ooh, be careful.
Alex
Covering their bottoms.
Juliette
But I know, wasn’t there about a month ago, they were releasing it, they were doing like a broader beta, and it stopped, it refused to recognise faces for a bit. I know, I saw a lot of chatter, and people were getting really worked up like, well, if it’s not going to do faces, what’s it for? Which I can appreciate, because that is a bit inconvenient. I took a photo of my partner the other day, and it described him fine. I tell you what I did, I took a photo of him, and then I was trying to think of fun question. I was demoing the app for him and I was trying to think of fun questions. So I just asked ‘Be My AI’: is this person alive? Which was fun.
Alex 6:36
I need to tell you my stories that I’ve been asking it. It’s not inappropriate, but it’s quite funny. But there was a point where yeah, it wasn’t describing faces. And it wasn’t the fault of’ Be My AI’ or ‘Be My Eyes’, it was actually Open AI. So the people who run chat GPT, because there was a huge privacy concern, that Oh, are we collecting people’s faces we shouldn’t do this? And also what changed, but they brought it back, which is very much welcome. Because when I first had it described faces, and then there was like, a month or two when it wasn’t describing faces, and I was like, Ooh, I don’t know if I wanna use it anymore. I guess, you know, you want to know what people look like and stuff. We should describe each other, me and Juliette after this during the demo, so you can get an idea what we look like. But some of the stuff I asked it was like, you know, I come from like an Asian background. And a lot of people just like to judge so much in Asian communities. Like, Aunties are like, ‘Oh, you’re a little bit plumper than normal’. And I was like, oh, okay, oh, you know, You’re so skinny, eat more, or whatever. So I was like, what would an Asian person ask right? there was a picture of me, my brother and my sister and my partner, I think, and we will say, which one looks more handsome? Or which one is fatter? So it was like, it was very diplomatic on, you know, the response it gave us. Oh, it’s very questionable, and, you know, it’s very subjective, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, doesn’t matter. Just tell me which one is plumper. And it was like, the one in the middle looks plumper. And that was me. And I was like, thanks. So it’s quite fun. I know it sounds really sad to trick the AI to, you know, to be…
Juliette 8:26
To be mean about you. So you were getting ‘Be My AI’ to like, neg you?
Alex
Yeah exactly, basically.
Juliette
I have to say, I haven’t used it for anything serious yet. And I know some people do. And I’m sure that I will. It’s really hard because when you’ve out and about sometimes you need it still, like not that responsive. Because you’ve got to take the photo, wait for it to process. It’s like for things that I want it for sometimes it’s like, not quick enough. But I think for things like – I don’t know, what do you think you’d use it for out and about?
Alex Man 8:56
So I actually used it when I was away in on holiday to read a lot of signs that are not normally in English. And it sort of struggles a little bit, but obviously, the AI can translate. So I use it like that. I have used it in a museum, which was really cool. So it was describing a lot of the architecture in Spain and everything and when I went to a museum in Hong Kong it described the exhibit and it was really detailed, and something that you don’t really get on even on an audio guide, right? You know, those audio guides that you carry around, that tell you the story behind it, but they don’t really tell you the description of the thing that it’s talking about that much. You get some that do. But yeah, so the AI did a really good job doing that and, you know, confirmed that with my partner and you know, she said, yeah, it looks what it says like, I’ve also been using it to tag describe images on Facebook.
Juliette 9:53
I wondered how your image descriptions were – because your image descriptions are so good. Not that I don’t think you’re capable of writing good image descriptions. But if you could see to write them, you probably wouldn’t need them. So it’s like, I was like, they’re so good! And now I know why.
Alex 10:08
Yeah, I kind of cheated.
Juliette
I’m definitely going to do that now.
Alex
I think I do that now. I’m guilty of doing the same thing as well. So when it comes to image description, I obviously I can’t see it, I just don’t bother doing an image description. So then it makes my content to my blind friends inaccessible. And it’s sort of hypocritical because I always preach Oh, you must use Image Description to like our marketing team, and other sighted people. And you know, but I’m not doing myself. But now with the description thing, I’ll just whack it in to get it described. Because you can describe it in the Photos app as well. You don’t have to take an instant picture and then upload it, you can do past pictures as well.
Juliette 10:49
And the great thing about ‘Be MY AI’ is it comes out with a general description. But then you can ask for details if you need to.
Alex 10:55
You can. Because it’s chat GPT, which we will talk about later on, you can ask it questions, you can just say, Oh, can you describe this? As if you’re describing it to a five year old? Or can you be less descriptive? Or can you talk more about this person on the left for me, and it will just go into detail as much. That’s why the flexibility is so great. Because there’s not a general one where you know, you’re given because everyone’s different, right? You might be someone who’s like, Oh, you don’t tell me too much. I don’t really care what you look like, but you might be someone who’s quite nosy like myself. It’s like, Oh, actually, yeah. tell me everything about a person. Does he have pimples? You know, does he have a mole on his left cheek or something like that? So I like more detail if you have questions as well.
Alex 11:26
All right, let’s get the AI to describe each other. So I’ll go first on my phone. So I’m gonna open
Juliette 11:48
We can take a selfie?
Alex 11:50
Well, that’s boring. I’ll take a picture of you. Okay, so look over here, smile or make your worst face.
Siri Voice 11:53
Take picture button
Cockney Siri Voice 11:59
Take picture.
Alex
There we go.
Cockney Siri Voice
Analysing picture. Please wait.
Alex 12:03
It does take a little time depending on your internet connection.
Cockney Siri Voice 12:09
The picture shows a woman sitting in a chair in what appears to be a recording studio or a radio station. She is wearing large headphones and is sitting in front of a professional microphone that is mounted on a stand. The woman is smiling widely and giving two thumbs up. She is wearing a black cardigan over a purple and beige colour block sweater and dark blue pants. She also has an orange lanyard around her neck with an ID badge attached to it, which has a QR code on it. The background shows a glimpse of the interior of the room, which has a modern design with a mix of white and teal coloured walls and wooden accents.
Alex 12:38
So it picked up a lot of details.
Juliette
That’s loads. I didn’t realise you’d done a full body, Alex.
Alex
I did do a full because you were too far.
Juliette 12:47
I also didn’t realise that our lanyards were orange and I’m pretty happy about that.
Alex 12:50
The strip is orange because it’s our theme colours, right? I realised that you have your sign in QR code on your lanyard and it picked that up as well which is quite detailed.
Juliette
That is really detailed isn’t it?
Alex
Do you wanna do me?
Juliette
Alright, go on.
Cockney Siri Voice 13:04
Ask more. Take Picture button.
Alex 13:06
There you go. You can take my phone.
Juliette 13:09
It’s on take picture, yeah?
Alex
Yeah, so just point it at me.
Juliette 13:12
I will let’s see if we are.
Cockney Siri Voice 13:14
Take picture. Analysing picture. Please wait. The picture shows a man sitting in the music studio. The man is wearing headphones and is making a peace sign with his right hand. He is wearing a white t shirt with a graphic design and grey sweatpants. He is sitting in front of a desk with a computer which has a music editing software open on a screen. There is also a keyboard, some papers and the speaker on the desk. To the left of the desk there is an acoustic guitar leaning against the wall. The walls are painted in teal. There are soundproofing panels on the wall behind the desk. The room also has a modern and clean design with a mix of concrete and painted walls.
Juliette
Oh my god.
Alex 13:49
Why don’t you ask it more?
Cockney Siri Voice 13:55
What colour is the sound proofing panel? Stopping Braille screen input. Portrait. Clear text. Send Message button. Please wait. ‘Be My AI’ is writing a message. the soundproofing panels on the wall behind the desk are teal in colour, which is a kind of blue-green.
Alex 14:12
That’s really accurate that is very accurate so it’s really good. If it didn’t give you enough information can ask it for even more detail, you can ask what type of computer it is and you know.
Juliette 14:24
You can ask like people’s hair colour, eye colour or all of that stuff.
Alex 14:29
So there are times when it goes you know does it really well and stuff but there is time there has been times where it has failed miserably so I’m going to quickly show you what I mean by this. So the other day I purchased something and I wanted to read the receipt. So this is what ‘Be My AI’ says.
Cockney Siri Voice 14:45
Share one photo select describe with ‘Be My Eyes’.
Alex 14:56
It’s a similar interface to the app itself really so you can ask questions after.
Cockney Siri Voice 15:00
Be My AI is still writing a message. The picture shows a receipt line on a wooden surface. The receipt is from Sam’s Club. It is printed on thermal paper and is slightly crumpled. The text on the receipt is upside down. There are several items listed on the receipt. But the text is not clear enough to read the details. There is also a barcode at the top of the receipt.
Alex 15:18
So it says Sam’s Club? And I think that’s an American store.
Cockney Siri Voice 15:21
text message text field cancel button.
Juliette 15:24
I’ve never heard of it.
Juliette 15:25
So what was it meant to say?
Alex 15:28
Well, I definitely didn’t go Sam’s Club. I know that’s incorrect. And then it started making things up. So this is what I mean. Let’s do Seeing AI.
Cockney Siri Voice 15:34
Recognise with Seeing AI. Processing. Text: Sainsbury’s: helping everyone eat better.36 Mix rubber cups 10 Mix real cups 10 Mix rubber.
Juliette:
That’s much more accurate.
Alex 15:53
It’s a lot more accurate, and it was a lot quicker as well.
Juliette
It was quicker.
Alex
Although it does seem to struggle when say, the text was upside down, like in that picture. And because it was like, Oh, it’s too blurry to see. But obviously it wasn’t blurry because Seeing AI saw it fine. So I think it’s a lot more forgiving when it comes to texts. And especially when you’re visually impaired. And you’re taking a picture you don’t know if these papers which way or right way or right side. So that’s why I think with text ‘Seeing AI’ seems a little bit better right now. It’ll be interesting how AI, you know, evolves and, but if it gets it correctly, you can ask it and I’ve used it before successfully where I ask it questions like, oh, just tell me about the letter. Don’t give me any other rubbish about, you know, the address and everything. And it did that really well.
Juliette 16:47
Oh really? Oh, that is quite good. Because I hate that bit at the beginning. where you’ve got to flick through your own details. You’re like, Yes, I know who I am.
Alex 16:53
Yeah. Because it’s evolving so much other providers has been implementing it as well. So apps like Seeing AI, which you know, has the word AI but it wasn’t that AI until now. I mean, it was really good.
Juliette 17:07
It wasn’t was it?
Alex
No it wasn’t. I mean, it was really good –
Juliette
Have they expanded it recently? Like, what’s it like now? I’ve not really used it.
Alex 17:12
I haven’t really used it as well. But we’ll whack a demo in.
Juliette
Let’s do a demo.
Cockney Siri Voice 17:15
Seeing AI. Channel: scene. Preview. Take picture. Processing. A laptop on a desk. More info.
A man is seen taking a selfie in front of a white wall. On the desk in front of him there’s a laptop with a green screen, and a piece of paper is resting on the keyboard to the side of the laptop. There’s a speaker further to the right, there’s an orange mug on the table and a white rectangular object with a round top. The desk is filled with various electronics and office supplies, including a computer monitor and a printer.
Alex 18:00
Yeah, so that’s Seeing AI, which is owned by Microsoft. And Microsoft has a big part on Open AI actually, because they invested so much money on Chat GPT. So I’m surprised how it compares to’ Be My AI’. But it really depends how you train it. Basically you train the model of the AI. So you can say be as descriptive or be less descriptive, or you are someone describing it to a blind person. So you tell it and they are called prompts. So maybe ‘Be My Eyes’ wrote a better prompt, basically.
Juliette 18:32
It does seem quite good at telling you, I don’t often have to ask extra questions. And when I do, I find it’s quite responsive or for the demos I’ve seen other people do. It does seem to, like it gets what you’re asking it, which is really good.
Alex 18:46
Yeah. So let’s move on to chat GPT, which powers basically, all the things that we’re talking about today. When it first came out back in November, I think of 2023, 2022, we’re in 2023 now. I mainly used it to be really lazy and say, oh, you know, write me an email to do this. And it did a good job. And at that time, no one knew about the AI thing, I think so you can be as you know, as formal as ever, but people won’t know. But I sort of caught on to that now. So when people use chat up GPT to write like social media posts, or emails and stuff, I got a knack to just say, oh, that’s written by AI, you lazy person.
Juliette 19:30
Yeah, I think the more it the more prominence it has, the more you’re going to be able to spot it. I only downloaded the chat GPT app last week when Alex and I were having a meeting about this podcast and I was like, oh my goodness, I don’t actually have it. And since then, we used it to try and come up with the name for this podcast, which was not successful, but I have only used it to – I was bored the other day. So I asked it to write me a haiku about a cat in the style of Charles Dickens. And I will say I did enjoy its output.
Alex 20:01
That actually reminds me of I’m not sure if you played around with. So during MSN days, if you remember MSN, there used to be a robot called Smarter child.
Juliette
Oh my god I remember Smarter Child!
Alex
I used to talk to that thing. Like, I sound so sad. But early mornings, I was like, Yeah, tell me a joke. Or you know, what do you think of this? I was like, this is just like Smarter Child but even better. So yeah. when it first came out, I was like, Okay, I obviously didn’t spend as much time because I have a life now apparently. It gave me that nostalgia. And I even told us, You remind me of Smarter Child. And it was like, Oh, I’m glad I can make you feel nostalgic, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, you’re getting creepy now. Yeah, when it first came out, I basically used it to send emails and just pretended to be the best employee at RSBC. Because people were like, how do you write that thing so quick? And how do you come up with a social media post. And I was like, Oh, I did marketing.
Juliette 21:03
Oh, you’re really giving away your secrets here Alex. Are you sure you want to leave this in the podcast?
Alex 21:09
So as I’ve been using it I thought of, hmm, how can AI help someone who’s visually impaired in you know, in everyday life? What I originally thought of was, as a lot of things, we have questions so we will, Google and some people might not have the computer skills to browse through a website or use headings or shortcuts.
Juliette 21:34
Google is not what it used to be as well, though, don’t you find now that like, you have to, like toggle through a lot of nonsense to actually get to the search results, it definitely is a lot more cluttered than it used to be. When you literally just want a one sentence or like, oh, what’s the chemical symbol for salt or whatever? I literally just want something to go, it is this. And I think chat GPT is really good for that. I know. So I know, I got recommended to use it for googling. Well, the replacement for googling shortcuts for programmes. So I was asking about a shortcut for JAWS, I think so I recently started using JAWS. So I’m a bit of a novice, and someone was like, Oh, I use chat GPTD If I want the JAWS shortcut, and it will tell me it. I was like that’s genius! And I wonder as well, Alex. Actually, I reckon you could, if you wanted to know, say you’re learning Braille, or you need to do something Braille-y, you could be like, you could ask chat GPT what the Braille dot numbers are for a certain cell. Which I haven’t tried yet. Maybe I’ll try.
Alex 22:44
I think it can definitely do that. Because remember, I was playing around with that Braille or ASCII code or whatever. It gave me the answer quite quickly and correctly, so I believe that it will know the dots. So yeah, it’s, it’s a great companion, when you’re learning something. There is a lot of clutter to go through when you just want a really quick answer. And it’s easy for someone who’s sighted it’s like, oh, yeah, I’ll just skim read and read this. And for advanced users of screen reader software, you can do the same thing as well. But it’s just instant and really quick. And that was the first thing that I thought of, oh, this is very useful for a blind person. As I used it even more, there’s other ways as well. So another way I’ll quickly demonstrate is using it to filter out lots of data. So for example, you know, like, people give you charts and things, especially when you’re in school, or maths, or whatever. Or, you know, if you’re working with Excel, and there’s a lot of data and lots of tables. So what I did one time I was like, I wonder if this works. And surprisingly, it does work. I pressed Ctrl and A, so I selected everything, copied and pasted it into chat GPT. And then told it just summarise it. And that was fine. All the information it told me was correct. And you know, it was really good. And I didn’t have to go through like loads and loads of data to find things. But then I can ask it questions as well. So I can say, Oh, who made the most money in July? Or who sold the most pens in August or something like that. And how do these sell it for? You can ask those questions without like looking or, you know, navigating an inaccessible table. And that was the first thing that I was like, this is brilliant.
Juliette 24:26
Blew my mind a little bit. I think that it’s going to be amazing. But I think that it will be really good. So like sometimes if I go on a spreadsheet someone else has created. I just want to know, how many columns are there? How many rows are there? Roughly how is it set out? Like I might then use chat GPT to ask about the data. But I would just be like my initial question would be tell me the rough layout of this spreadsheet because you know, sometimes people format things differently and you’re like I can’t, like, people start their spreadsheets like five rows down. So I open it out. And I’m like, this seems blank, but it can’t be blank. So I would use it for like a basic overview and then go into detail from there. I’m yeah, I’m really excited to start trying to use it for that. And I will say also I find the iPhone app compared to like, doing Google on your Safari and blah blah, like it’s so clean and simple. And I think that’s like, what’s going to draw people to it a bit more.
Alex 25:24
Obviously typing is probably not for everyone, which leads us to the next thing that we want to talk about is these chat voice assistants. So obviously, Siri, Amazon, Google Assistant, don’t have anything powered by chat GPT. Yet, I guess you can hack Siri so it uses a Siri voice. But it’s not really that good. So there’s these apps where you can just talk to an AI using your voice, so you’re not typing one app that I like to use is called ‘Call Annie’. And you can download it as well. It’s free. It’s basically you have a conversation with AI. So you talk to her. So there’s no typing whatsoever, which is great for people who might find it really quite slow to type or you know, don’t haven’t mastered touch typing yet. And I don’t really use it myself. But it’s really good for like brainstorming where you’re like, you know, trying to think of think of ideas and stuff. I was like, Oh, I’m doing this. And I’ll quickly show you what I mean by that with this demo. Hello. I’m currently editing a very interesting podcast about visual impairment and AI.
Annie AI Voice 26:35
Hey, there, that sounds like such a fascinating topic for a podcast. I’m really curious to hear more about it. What specifically are you covering in the episode? And do you have a title in mind for your podcast yet?
Alex 26:46
No. Why don’t you give me one?
Annie AI Voice 26:50
Oh, I’d be delighted to help you come up with a title for your podcast. How about ‘Sight Unseen, navigating the world of AI for the visually impaired?’ It’s catchy and captures the essence of your podcast focus on AI and visual impairment. What do you think?
Alex 27:05
Sounds great. But do you have any more?
Annie AI Voice 27:08
Absolutely. Here are a few more podcast title ideas for you. One: ‘Tech Mates: empowering the visually impaired with AI’.
Alex 27:18
Whoa whoah whoa, you stole our idea!
Annie AI Voice 27:22
Oh, no, I’m so sorry. If it seemed that way. I promise. I didn’t mean to steal your idea.
Alex 27:27
But yeah, this is another alternative to you know, typing something down.
Juliette 27:35
So is it powered by Chat GPT?
Alex 27:37
Yup, also powered by Chat GPT. So basically Chat GPT just holding everything together, Be MY eyes, Chat GPT itself. and this Call Annie app is all powered by chat GPT.
Juliette 27:48
So you can kind of see how it’s fed through even in the space of a year. Like it’s quite impressive. Because I think I guess that leads us on to talking about what is the where is this heading? I know, there’s been so much speculation and a lot of doom and gloom. And I think maybe we’ll probably steer clear of that. But I think maybe like talking about where it can go for VI people. So for example, when you’re talking about ‘Call Annie’ all I can think about is the film Her. It’s about a guy who like, ends up in a relationship with his operating system, essentially. But it’s really it’s a yeah it’s a really good film. It’s I mean, I think my main question for you, Alex is how many years away from AI robot guide dogs are we?
Alex
You just want a robot guide dog don’t you?
Juliette
I mean, who wouldn’t want a robot guide dog?
Alex 28:33
I would want one as well. I’m not a huge fan of pets. It seems like a cleaner, more sterile than a guide dog. I don’t think it’s that long, especially with I personally think AI has accelerated inventions of stuff. Right? So yeah, a lot of people have been harnessing AI to say, maybe to do the programming, because it does programming as well. Maybe to give them ideas and stuff. But from the invention of this Chat GPT or whatever, whatever you want to call it. A lot of advancements has been going so quick. So I think it’s going to be, you know, minimum five years, five to ten years, we’ll get something like that.
Juliette 29:16
Yeah I think I’ll, I’ll be really interested to see where it sits. So like a lot of the AI now it sits within hardware that we already have. It’s in our phones, our laptops, our you know, I joke about guide dogs, but obviously, I don’t know, because you’d have to create the you’d have to create the hardware. But I do think we’re gonna see, for VI people really responsive navigation apps, like you could have like a navigation buddy that you call up and will walk you through your way round in real time, which is something I would be so excited to have, because I find navigating unknown areas so hard, and I wish I didn’t. And that’s what I’m most excited for is that development and hopefully that will come because we’ve got the hardware ready. I want an app where I can essentially hang my phone around my neck, point the camera forward, and I’ve got something in real time that will go. Yeah, there’s something on your left. So go around it, you’re gonna hit your cane with it. Like, that would be amazing. and I think I hope that’s, that’s my hope for what we’re working towards. That’s my like, optimistic prediction that I think we’ll get there and I think you’re right, maybe five years, ten years.
Alex 30:26
Hey, Bro 9000, can you close our podcasts?
Bro 9000 James AI Voice 30:29
Yo, bro. Absolutely. I got your back on this one. Alright. Listen up, everyone. This is James, your bro and co-host of the Tech Mates podcast. Just wanted to give you a quick shout out and remind you to tune into our next episode, bro. We’ve got some epic stuff lined up, especially about AI and its impact on visually impaired peeps. It’s going to be mind-blowing, bro. And hey, while you’re at it, we would really appreciate it if you could take a moment to leave us a review. We love hearing from you. And your feedback means the world to us, bro. So drop us a review and let us know what you think. We’re always striving to make the podcast even more awesome for you, bro. Also, don’t forget to hit us up on social media, bro. We want to engage with you, answer your questions and have some epic discussions. So follow us tweet a slide into our DMs bro.
Alex 31:16
See you guys next time.
Juliette
Bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai