The Rise Of The Machines; Analogue Meets Artificial intelligence - Which-50

When Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) become an early-stage investor in Melbourne-based Sonnant, Which-50.com Surprisingly, Sonnant CEO Tony Simmons responded by offering a demonstration to explain how it all worked. Sonnant styles itself as a "transformational artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) company that provides content discovery for the spoken word". Simmons explained that the key to Sonnant's success was their initial decision to train the AI to understand the Australian accent in phase one. Anyone who's tried to make a booking at a restaurant while in America will know what I mean." Australian English is most associated with monophthongs (single vowels), where there are approximately 20 distinct sounds compared to American English, with only 16 sounds. Also difficult for the AI are Australian diphthongs, the timing between two vowel sounds and the tendency for a falling second sound. An accurate transcript of an analogue recording is necessary to map the ...