University Implements Voice Technology Across Campus

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with John Rome, Deputy CIO and Chief Evangelist at Arizona State University, from the Amazon Alexa VOICE Summit at NJIT, to explain how the college has implemented voice technology throughout its campus to create a better experience for students.

9/25/18 #2167

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"John Rome, Deputy CIO, which stands for Chief...? ...Information Officer. Information Officer, and Voice Evangelist at Arizona State University? Yes. Now, Arizona State University was named by US News and World Report as what? The most innovative school three years running over... take a guess what schools. Not MIT...? Yes. No way. Guess the other one. Don't say the big H. Oh no, it's Stanford. Oh it's not... Stanford out there? Yeah. Wait, they're right there...? Yeah. We're... They're in the middle of it? We're no longer this party school that everyone thinks we are, you know, we're... So the Sun Devils are more than just... Yeah. ...a great sports program? It's a great institution. Now you're here at NJIT, another great institution? Yeah. You're doing one of the keynotes, talking about? Talking about Alexa and how ASU is trying to become a voice enabled campus. And it started when our engineering dean decided, "Hey, why don't we put Alexa Dots in the residence halls of a new..." I'm sorry, Alexa Dots? You know what Alexa Dots are? Help me a little bit will ya? Okay, yeah, I think... you know I'm in a voice conference, you think everybody knows what a Dot is. Hold on, wait a minute. So not all has advanced? Yeah. So, you know, Amazon has come up with these devices that you can talk to and then they respond back to you. So you can ask it questions like "what's the weather?" or "play me some music" and it'll come back... well you can actually program these to be specific to like... to ASU. So as a student, I can ask a question like "what events are happening on campus?" "when are finals exams?" and I can get that type of answer. So I can say "how late is the library open?" And it'll actually give you a response. Can you also do this. I've taught here. Can you ask "is Doctor Adubato a good professor?" And I think that's coming. I mean, I think... You notice I make everything something... Yeah. ...about me sooner or later? Yeah. Here's the question, seriously. No. It isn't about... it's about any professor? No, no it... you could... did... do they do that subjective? No, it's gonna be... it's coming, but I think we're still really in the infancy of voice. It's still... So, straight information? Yeah, it's pretty much straight information. But that's what I think machine learning and artificial intelligence is going to help us with. It's gonna get to the point now, I would say within two or three years, we're gonna have voice tutors where students can..."