Shyamala Prayaga Shares Her Perspective on the Emotionally Engaged Digital Assistant (Episode 150)
Welcome, Shyamala Prayaga!
Shyamala works for Ford and is the Autonomous Conversational AI Lead. Shyamala is doing cutting-edge work that is shaping the auto industry. She is the founder of the Digital Assistant Academy. She is also working on a book called “Emotionally Engaged Digital Assistant” and another book called “Humanizing Privacy.” She has also been named a top 40 Voice Ai Influencer.
What Type of Work Does Shyamala Do at Ford Motor Company?
Shyamala works on use cases for autonomous vehicles, determines what type of technology they should be utilizing, partnerships, and everything to do with a digital assistant.
How Shyamala Initially Got Interested in Voice?
Shyamala participated in hackathons and noticed that people wanted to shop online in India, but online shopping was not existent in India back in 2012. She came up with an idea for an online trial solution and combined voice with augmented reality. She was inspired by the concept of augmented reality and trying things out virtually.
Digital Assistant Academy
She realized that all the companies that she either worked for in the past or present had their own set processes and there were no commonalities when it came to conversation design.
Shyamala mentioned that voice will become mainstream at some point and a piece of paper will become more important than your knowledge. She also realized that certain standards were missing around ethics, exclusivity, and privacy. This gap in the marketplace inspired Shyamala to create the Digital Assistant Academy.
How Shyamala Projects the Future
Shyamala saw how smartphones and voice have evolved and she mentioned that 2012 was a breaking point for technology when Alexa launched. Shyamala believes that two or three generations from now, everything will be interconnected. Currently, there are independent operating systems for things such as smart TVs and smart refrigerators, her vision is that in the future, there will be one voice assistant at home that controls everything in a home. Shyamala sees so much potential with voice.
The Process of Writing Her Book
Shyamala believes that the emotional connection is missing when it comes to personal voice assistants and until we fix this problem; voice assistants will not be everything to us. She got her vision for her book because of this issue and her book discusses how people can make an emotional connection by humanizing technology, privacy, conversation, inclusivity, and more. Shyamala interviewed people from different backgrounds and countries to understand their mindset to gather content for her book and share different processes and frameworks. Her new book is expected to launch in 2021 and to get notified when the book comes out, you can sign up on her website.
Learn More About Shyamala
Visit her website
Connect with Shyamala on Linkedin
Follow Shyamala on Twitter
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