Few topics are as personal as our health and based on the current trends in healthcare, things are going to be getting a whole lot more personal very soon. I had the pleasure of presenting the closing plenary last week for the NW Regional Primary Care Association’s 2019 Fall Primary […]
I just returned from an exciting and memorable week in Helsinki and Turku, Finland. As one of the keynote speakers for the annual two-day SHIFT Business Festival, I spoke about the future of human-machine interfaces. Now in its fourth year, SHIFT’s mission is “to help radical innovators shape a better […]
A world of virtual assistants Over the past few years, virtual assistants have become increasingly prevalent in our homes and offices. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri are a few of the predominant virtual assistant programs that are being run on an ever-growing number of platforms. For […]
It was an honor to be a judge for the 2018 Alexa Prize Finals. The work being done by Amazon and these teams in the rapidly advancing field of conversational artificial intelligence is exciting and I’m can’t wait to see what comes next! It’s my opinion that this is a […]
On Tuesday, I had the honor of kicking off Edmonds Community College’s “Kickoff Week”, addressing the professors and administrators there about “Educating Our Workforce in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” We continued with an hour-long Q&A/conversation following the presentation and I really enjoyed seeing how proactive and engaged everyone was. […]
I spent an amazing couple of hours with a few dozen students at the University of Washington’s “Smart Machines & The Future of Humanity” course on Monday. While not focused on focused on futures methodology, I’m really pleased to see college courses focused on trying to anticipate and understand the […]
“Revolution in Emotional Computing”, the Chinese language edition of “Heart of the Machine” is now available in China! Just in time for Chinese New Year! With a cool cover and some amazing testimonials, it’s very exciting to see this new edition finally out! Apparently, most of that country’s publishing takes […]
Okay, titling this post “Richard and TED’s Excellent Adventure” is a bit corny, but it’s accurate too. My experience applying to, preparing for and presenting at my first TEDx event was a most excellent adventure! The quality of TEDxSnoIsleLibraries’ organization and coaching was superb and it was both a pleasure […]
You may not be able to judge a book by it’s cover, but you certainly can judge a bot by its conversation! I recently had the pleasure of being one of the finalist judges for Amazon’s $2.5 million Alexa Prize. This inaugural competition focused on the grand challenge of building […]
It’s been a busy week! Clients, interviews, research, writing and prepping for a TEDx talk had me wearing many hats and keeping lots of balls in the air. (That’s either a mixed-metaphor or I’m in the circus. Perhaps it’s both!) The week started with an interview for the RoboPsych podcast […]