Siri and Alexa were only the beginning. As voice recognition and speech synthesis technologies continue to mature, the days of typing on keyboards to interact with the digital world around us could be coming to an end — and sooner than many of us anticipated. Where today's virtual assistants exist on our mobile devices and desktops to provide scripted answers to specific questions, the LLM-powered generative AI copilots of tomorrow will be there, and everywhere else too. This is the "voice-first" future Tobias Dengel envisions in his new book, The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology.

Using a wide-ranging set of examples, and applications in everything from marketing, sales and customer service to manufacturing and logistics, Dengel walks the reader through how voice technologies can revolutionize the ways in which we interact with the digital world. In the excerpt below, Dengel discusses voice technology might expand its role in the aviation industry, even after the disastrous outcome of its early use in the Boeing 737 MAX.       

PublicAffairs

Excerpted from THE SOUND OF THE FUTURE: The Coming Age of Voice Technology by Tobias Dengel with Karl Weber. Copyright © 2023. Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

REDUCING THE BIGGEST RISKS: MAKING FLYING SAFER

Some workplaces involve greater risks than others. Today’s technology-driven society sometimes multiplies the risks we face by giving ordinary people control over once-incredible amounts of power, in forms that range from tractor trailers to jet airplanes. People carrying out professional occupations that involve significant risks on a daily basis will also benefit from the safety edge that voice provides — as will the society that depends on these well-trained, highly skilled yet imperfect human beings.

When the Boeing 737 MAX airliner was rolled out in 2015, it featured a number of innovations, including distinctive split-tip winglets and airframe modifications that affected the jumbo jet’s aerodynamic characteristics. A critical launch goal for Boeing was to enable commercial pilots to fly the new plane without needing new certifications, since retraining pilots is very expensive for airlines. To achieve that goal, the airliner’s software included an array of ambitious new features, including many intended to increase safety by taking over control from the crew in certain situations. These included something called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which was supposed to compensate for an excessive nose-up angle by adjusting the horizontal stabilizer to keep the aircraft from stalling— a complicated technical “hack” implemented by Boeing to avoid the larger cost involved in rewriting the program from the ground up.

The 737 MAX was a top seller right out of the gate. But what Boeing and its airline customers hadn’t realized was that the software was being asked to do things the pilots didn’t fully understand. As a result, pilots found themselves unable to interface in a timely fashion with the complex system in front of them. The ultimate result was two tragic crashes with 346 fatalities, forcing the grounding of the 737 MAX fleet and a fraud settlement that cost Boeing some $2.5 billion. Additional losses from cancelled aircraft orders, lowered stock value, and other damages have been estimated at up to $60 billion. 

These needless losses — financial and human — were caused, in large part, by small yet fatal failures of cockpit communication between people and machines. The pilots could tell that something serious was wrong, but the existing controls made it difficult for them to figure out what that was and to work with the system to correct the problem. As a result, in the words of investigative reporter Peter Robison, “the pilots were trying to retake control of the plane, so that the plane was pitching up and down over several minutes.” Based on his re-creation of what happened, Robison concludes, “it would have been terrifying for the people on the planes.”

When voice becomes a major interface in airliner cockpits, a new tool for preventing such disasters will be available. In traditional aviation, pilots receive commands like “Cleared Direct Casanova VOR” or “Intercept the ILS 3” via radio from dispatchers at air traffic control. After the pilots get this information, they must use their eyes and hands to locate and press a series of buttons to transmit the same commands to the aircraft. In a voice-driven world, that time-wasting, error-prone step will be eliminated. In the first stage of voice adoption, pilots will simply be able to say a few words without moving their eyes from the controls around them, and the plane will respond. According to Geoff Shapiro, a human factors engineer at the former Rockwell Collins Advanced Technology Center, this shift trims the time spent when entering simple navigational commands from half a minute to eight seconds — a huge improvement in circumstances when a few moments can be critical. In the second stage, once veteran pilots have recognized and accepted the power of voice, the plane will automatically follow the spoken instructions from air traffic control, merely asking the pilot to confirm them.

A voice-interface solution integrating the latest capabilities of voice-driven artificial intelligence can improve airline safety in several ways. It gives the system self-awareness and the ability to proactively communicate its state and status to pilots, thereby alerting them to problems even at moments when they might otherwise be distracted or inattentive. Using increasingly powerful voice-technology tools like automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding, it also allows the airplane’s control systems to process and act on conversational speech, making the implementation of pilot commands faster and more accurate than ever. It facilitates real-time communications linking the cockpit, air traffic control, the airline carrier, and maintenance engineers to remove inconsistencies in communication due to human indecision or misjudgment. In the near future, it may even be able to use emerging voice-tech tools such as voice biometrics and real-time sentiment analysis to determine stress levels being experienced by pilots —information that could be used to transmit emergency alerts to air traffic controllers and others on the ground.

Voice technology won’t eliminate all the traditional activities pilots are trained to perform. But in critical moments when the speed of response to messages from a control tower may spell the difference between survival and disaster, the use of a voice interface will prevent crashes and save lives. This is not a fantasy about the remote future. Today’s planes have all the electronics needed to make it possible. 

One field of aviation in which safety risks are especially intense is military flying. It’s also an arena in which voice-enabled aviation is being avidly pursued. Alabama-based Dynetics has received $12.3 million from DARPA, the Pentagon’s storied defense-technology division, to develop the use of AI in “high-intensity air conflicts.” The third phrase of the current three-phase research/implementation program involves a “realistic, manned-flight environment involving complex human-machine collaboration” — including voice communication. 

The US Air Force is not alone in pursuing this technological advantage. The next generation of the MiG-35, the highly advanced Russian fighter jet, will apparently feature a voice assistant to offer advice in high-pressure situations. Test pilot Dmitry Selivanov says, “We call her Rita, the voice communicant. Her voice remains pleasant and calm even if fire hits the engine. She does not talk all the time, she just makes recommendations if the plane approaches some restrictions. Hints are also provided during combat usage.”

Voice-controlled flying is also in development for civilian aircraft. Companies like Honeywell and Rockwell are designing voice interfaces for aviation, with an initial focus on reducing pilot workload around tedious tasks involving basic, repetitive commands like “Give me the weather at LAX and any critical weather en route.” More extensive and sophisticated use cases for voice tech in aviation are steadily emerging. Vipul Gupta is general manager of Honeywell Aerospace Avionics. He and his team are deeply focused on perfecting the technology of the voice cockpit, especially its response speed, which is a crucial safety feature. Their engineers have reduced the voice system’s average response time to 250 milliseconds, which means, in effect, that the system can react more quickly than a human pilot can.

Over time, voice-controlled aircraft systems will become commonplace in most forms of aviation. But in the short term, the most important use cases will be in general aviation, where single-pilot operators are notoriously overloaded, especially when operating in bad weather or congested areas. Having a “voice copilot” will ease those burdens and make the flying experience safer for pilot and passengers alike.

Voice-controlled aircraft are also likely to dominate the emerging field of urban air mobility, which involves the use of small aircraft for purposes ranging from cargo deliveries to sightseeing tours within city and suburban airspaces. New types of aircraft, such as electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) are likely to dominate this domain, with the marketplace for eVTOLs expected to explode from nothing in 2022 to $1.75 billion in 2028. As this new domain of flight expands, experienced pilots will be in short supply, so the industry is now designing simplified cockpit systems, controlled by voice, that trained “operators” will be able to manage.

Vipul Gupta is bullish about the future of the voice-powered cockpit. “Eventually,” he says, “we’ll have a voice assistant where you will just sit in [the aircraft] and the passenger will say, ‘Hey, fly me there, take me there. And then the system does it.’”

As a licensed pilot with significant personal experience in the cock- pit, I suspect he will be right —eventually. As with most innovations, I believe it will take longer than the early adopters and enthusiasts believe. This is especially likely in a critical field like aviation, in which human trust issues and regulatory hurdles can take years to overcome. But the fact is that the challenges of voice-powered flight are actually simpler in many ways than those faced by other technologies, such as autonomous automobiles. For example, a plane cruising at 20,000 feet doesn’t have to deal with red lights, kids dashing into the street, or other drivers tailgating.

For this reason, I concur with the experts who say that we will have safe, effective voice-controlled planes sooner than autonomous cars. And once the technology is fully developed, the safety advantages of a system that can respond to spoken commands almost instantly in an emergency will be too powerful for the aviation industry to forgo.

Anyone sitting on a mountain of cryptocurrency can now use it to buy a Ferrari in the US. According to Reuters, the luxury carmaker is working with the crypto payment processor BitPay to accept bitcoin, ether, and USDC for purchases stateside, which customers were apparently begging for. Europe is expected to get the same treatment in early 2024, with other regions to follow.

There won’t be any upcharges for those paying with crypto, Ferrari’s Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer Enrico Galliera told Reuters, and BitPay will convert those payments to traditional currency at the time of the transaction to avoid any issues of volatility. Galliera said the move will help the company reach “people who are not necessarily our clients but might afford a Ferrari.”

Just last year, Ferrari announced a commitment to more sustainable operations, including reducing its environmental footprint, and embracing the notoriously energy-intensive cryptocurrencies would seem to go against that. But, the company insists this doesn’t get in the way of its mission. Galliera cited recent strides in improving crypto’s carbon footprint, like heavier reliance on renewable energy sources, and told Reuters, “Our target to reach for carbon neutrality by 2030 along our whole value chain is absolutely confirmed.”

X’s firing of an employee who pushed back against a return-to-office policy imposed by Elon Musk last year was illegal, the National Labor Relations Board alleges. In what Bloomberg reports is the NLRB’s first formal complaint against X Corp., filed on Friday, the labor board accused the company of retaliating against software engineer Yao Yue for attempting to organize workers in the wake of the new policy. After Musk gave then-Twitter employees an ultimatum in November 2022 to return to the office, Yue urged others not to resign in response but instead “let him fire you.”

Musk at the time had told employees, “If you can physically make it to an office and you don’t show up, resignation accepted.” Yue was fired five days after tweeting about it and writing a similar post on Slack. In terminating her, the complaint filed by a San Francisco branch of the NLRB alleges the company violated federal labor law by “interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees” exercising protected rights, according to CNBC. A hearing is now set for January 30.

The formal NLRB complaint may be a first for X, but accusations of retaliation against employees are nothing new for a Musk-helmed company. In early 2023, Tesla workers in Buffalo, New York accused the company of firing them for unionizing, and eight SpaceX employees filed a complaint with the NLRB in 2022 claiming they were terminated for criticizing Musk.

You may have to pay a bit more for NVIDIA's cloud gaming service starting on November 1. The company has raised the subscription prices for GeForce Now in Canada and Europe "to account for increased operational costs in those areas." To be exact, if you're paying in CAD, GBP, EUR, SEK, NOK, DKK, CZK or PLN, expect to get hit by price adjustments next month. In Canada, for instance, the $10 Priority tier will cost $14 per month. Meanwhile, the Ultimate tier, which grants you access to servers with RTX 4080 GPUs, 240 fps gameplay and full support for hardware-based ray tracing, will cost $6 more at $26 per month. 

If you're in the UK, you'll have to pay £2 more for the UItimate tier. It's also an additional €2 if you're paying in Euros. As you can see, the amount you'll have to add depends on your region, but there is a way to lock in the service's current pricing for the next half year: Simply pay for a 6-month membership before November 1. Take note that a 6-month Ultimate membership will cost $40 more in Canada and £20 more in the UK when the new prices take effect next month. 

You can also purchase membership gift cards within the next couple of weeks at their current prices. NVIDIA says it will adjust gift card pricing after November 1, as well, but it will honor cards purchased before that even if they're redeemed at a later date. If you got into the service early and are a "Founder" member, though, don't worry — the price hikes don't apply to you, and you can continue paying your current rates. 

NVIDIA

EU Commissioner Thierry Breton has been sending warning letters to online platforms, reminding them of their duty to address disinformation going around regarding the Israel-Hamas war. Now Breton has written a letter addressed to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, reminding him of the company's "precise obligations regarding content moderation under the EU Digital Services Act." Specifically, Breton is asking Alphabet to be "very vigilant" when it comes to Israel-Hamas-related content posted on YouTube. 

The European Commission has been seeing a "surge of illegal content and disinformation" being disseminated via certain platforms, he said, telling Pichai that Alphabet has an obligation to protect children and teens from "violent content depicting hostage taking and other graphic videos." Breton also warned Pichai that if Alphabet receives notices of illegal content from the EU, it must respond in a timely manner. Finally, he reminded the CEO that the company must have mitigation measures in place to address "civic discourse stemming from disinformation." The video-sharing service must also adequately differentiate reliable news sources from terrorist propaganda and manipulated content, such as clickbait videos. 

YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi told The Verge that the service has "removed tens of thousands of harmful videos and terminated hundreds of channels" following the attacks in Israel and the "conflict now underway in Israel and Gaza." The platform's systems, she added, "continue to connect people with high-quality news and information." She also said that YouTube's teams are "working around the clock to monitor for harmful footage and remain vigilant to take action quickly if needed on all types of content, including Shorts and livestreams."

Breton was the same the official who had previously sent Elon Musk an "urgent" letter about the spread of disinformation on X amid the Israel-Hamas war. He called out the spread of "fake and manipulated images and facts circulating on [the platform formerly known as Twitter] in the EU, such as repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games." X CEO Linda Yaccarino published the company's response a day later, claiming to have removed or labeled "tens of thousands of pieces of content" and to have deleted hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts from the platform. Even so, the European Union still opened an investigation into X for the lackluster moderation of illegal content and disinformation related to the war.

The EU commissioner also sent Meta a stern letter, voicing similar concerns about misinformation on its platforms. Meta responded by saying that "expert teams from across [ts] company have been working around the clock to monitor [its] platforms while protecting people's ability to use [its] apps to shed light on important developments happening on the ground." Breton sent TikTok a letter about disinformation spreading on its platform related to the Israel-Hamas war, as well, giving the company 24 hours to explain how it's complying with EU law. 

In addition to asking YouTube to keep a close eye on Israel-Hamas disinformation, Breton also tackled the issue of election-related disinformation in his letter. He is asking the service to notify his team of the measures it has taken to mitigate deepfakes "in light of upcoming elections in Poland, The Netherlands, Lithuania, Belgium, Croatia, Romania and Austria, and the European Parliament elections."

Valve has warned Counter-Strike 2 players that AMD’s latest graphics driver could get them banned. The problem lies in AMD’s Anti-Lag+ feature, which triggers the Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) system, duping it into mistaking the driver’s low-latency mode for cheating.

The problem lies in Anti-Lag+ intercepting and redirecting Dynamic Link Library (DLL) functions. VAC views DLL reroutes as cheats (in other cases, they often are), which could lead to getting booted from Counter-Strike 2.

A Reddit thread about the issue claims “many players” have reported receiving VAC bans from using the latest AMD driver (23.10.1). “It seems that VAC is banning everyone BUT the cheaters,” quipped u/Volfong in the thread. “Can confirm I got banned today and Anti-Lag+ was turned on,” wrote u/trkemrasr. “They better reverse this shit quickly.”

Valve plans to do just that. “Once AMD ships an update we can do the work of identifying affected users and reversing their ban,” the publisher posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Until the problem is resolved, Valve recommends turning off Anti-Lag+ in the graphics card settings. If you haven’t changed the default, you can disable Anti-Lag+ with the hotkey of Alt+L. You can double-check the shortcut’s setting by opening AMD Radeon Software, clicking on the gear icon and choosing Hotkeys from the sub-menu. Selecting the existing hotkey for Anti-Lag+ allows you to customize it.

Engadget has contacted AMD for comment and will update this article if we hear back.

Counter-Strike 2 launched in September after months of hype. The update, which replaced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Steam, adds upgraded graphics and maps alongside more realistic smoke. The game uses Valve’s Source 2 engine for improved lighting, clearer textures and updated geometry. You’ll need a somewhat modern Windows machine to play it as Valve says it has no plans to bring the sequel to macOS or older PCs.

Several weeks after Nintendo revealed Charles Martinet will no longer voice Mario, the company has confirmed the identity of the actor who'll play its most famous character for the foreseeable future. Kevin Afghani is the new voice of Mario Mario and Luigi Mario in Nintendo's games.

"Incredibly proud to have voiced Mario and Luigi in Super Mario Bros. Wonder," Afghani, who was perhaps best known until now as the voice of Arnold in Genshin Impact, wrote on X. "Thanks to Nintendo for inviting me into the Flower Kingdom!" Nintendo confirmed to Polygon that Afghani is voicing the characters and will have the honor of being the first actor to portray Elephant Mario.

Fans noticed something different with Mario's voice when the first trailer for Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which arrives on October 20, emerged over the summer. They noticed a difference in Wario's voice in a WarioWare: Move It! clip too. It's not yet clear who's playing Mario's arch-rival in that game.

Martinet, who is 67, was the man behind Mario's "wahoo!" and "here we go!" exclamations for well over two decades in games and since 1991 at trade shows. He's played several other characters in the Mario-verse during that time, including Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Baby Luigi and Baby Mario.

But whether it was Martinet's decision or Nintendo's, it was evidently time for a change. Martinet will continue to work with Nintendo as a “Mario Ambassador,” which will see him "continue to travel the world sharing the joy of Mario."

The Evil Within will be free next week on the Epic Games Store. The nearly decade-old title is a survival horror game from Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, who left Bethesda earlier this year. The game will be free to claim on Epic from October 19 to 26.

The game puts you in the shoes of Detective Sebastian Castellanos as he finds himself sucked into a macabre world full of nightmarish monsters and traps. The Evil Within’s action unfolds in a third-person perspective as Castellanos uses stealth and whatever weapons and resources he can scrap together to unravel the mystery of his environment and the villainous Ruvik. The highly intelligent antagonist toes the line between madman and tortured soul as he helms the STEM machine, a complex device that can link human minds together in a virtual world.

Although some players and reviewers chided the title’s uneven plot and archetypal (sometimes bordering on generic) enemies, it could be seen as something of a modern cult classic for horror fans and Mikami devotees. You can add the game (typically $20 these days) to your account for free next week in the Epic Games Store.

The world of ants is a mysterious one, as we’re still learning new stuff about the most populous insect on Earth. Soon we’ll be able to get a more hands-on approach with everyone’s favorite picnic-ruiners, thanks to the forthcoming insect sim Empire of the Ants. The game’s based on the hit sci-fi book series and has you controlling a heroic ant to protect your massive colony.

Publisher Microids and developer Tower Five just dropped a trailer and these are perhaps the most photorealistic ants ever seen in a video game. As a matter of fact, the whole trailer’s teeming with eye candy, which makes sense given the title was built using Epic Games’ powerful Unreal Engine 5. Plus it’s not just one or two ants on screen, as in-game footage shows hundreds of the little buggers doing their thing, complete with a photorealistic forest down to the pebbles and dirt on the floor.

As for gameplay, the devs liken it to a real-time strategy title, with some 3rd-person adventuring peppered throughout. The makers say that “strategy planning, exploration, combat skills, but most of all, setting up local wildlife alliances will be necessary to survive the many challenges awaiting.”

The developers tout scalable difficulty levels to suit players of varying skill, a day-night cycle and gameplay that changes depending on the season. Each season will present players with different attributes, adding some light RPG elements, impacting “speed, resistance, buffs and more,” according to an email sent to Engadget.

There’s no release date yet, other than sometime in 2024, but the game’s coming to both PC and unnamed consoles (likely PS5 and Xbox S/X.) Publisher Microids previously released a smaller-scale adaptation of Empire of the Ants, back in 2000. Developers Tower Five previously worked on the strategy game Lornsword Winter Chronicles and the ill-fated 2020 remake of XIII.

One of the biggest unanswered questions regarding Microsoft's $67.8 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard concerned the role of Bobby Kotick at the company. Now that the deal is finally complete and the publisher is officially a part of Microsoft, the future of the Activision Blizzard CEO is a little clearer.

In a memo to employees, Kotick wrote that he is "fully committed to helping with the transition." He'll remain at the helm "through the end of 2023" and he'll report to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. "We both look forward to working together on a smooth integration for our teams and players," Kotick wrote.

Kotick is widely expected to step down from the role he has held for over three decades as soon as January 1, though Activision Blizzard has declined to confirm an exact date for his departure. In any case, his contract runs until April.

Other changes are expected at the top of Activision Blizzard. In his own memo to the publisher's staff, Spencer wrote that "we will share more updates on our new organizational structure in the coming months."

Kotick shaped his company into a financially successful enterprise after leading a group of investors to buy Mediagenic for a bargain-basement price in 1991. He restructured the company and restored its previous name of Activision. In 2008, following a string of successful games, acquisitions and investments, Kotick engineered a merger with the games division of Vivendi, which owned Blizzard.

However, Kotick's stewardship of the company has long been a controversial one. As far back as 2010, Kotaku called him "the most hated man in video games," partly because of the perception that Kotick places a heavy focus on monetizing Activision Blizzard's games as much as possible. That's not to mention his reported treatment of employees at his various companies.

Over the last few years, observers have been paying more attention to Activision Blizzard's culture under Kotick. In 2021, the California Civil Rights Department, sued the company, alleging that it fostered a culture where discrimination and widespread harassment were rife. Later that year, a report by The Wall Street Journal indicated that Kotick had long been aware of sexual misconduct and assault allegations at Activision Blizzard, and that he neglected to share some of those (or details about settlements that were agreed with alleged victims) with the board.

The report led to many Activision Blizzard workers walking out and demanding Kotick's resignation. The following year, months after Microsoft made its blockbuster bid for Activision Blizzard, the publisher's shareholders voted to let Kotick keep his board seat.

In fact, the turmoil over Activision Blizzard's toxic workplace culture (and resulting pressure on the company that sent its stock tumbling) was what prompted Microsoft to buy the company. Kotick had claimed that Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV delays resulted in a fall of the stock price. But workers pushed back on those assertions.

Overwatch producer Tracy Kennedy claimed in early 2022 that Kotick pushed "random projects" onto the development team. Kennedy said the team worked overtime only to see those projects canceled and that "entire teams are turning over" and blaming Kotick.

It's not only at Activision where Kotick has spurred controversy. In 2007, the flight attendant of a private jet he was co-owner of sued him. The attendant alleged that, after she informed the plane's other owner that the pilot had sexually harassed her, Kotick fired her. The case resulted in a $200,000 settlement for the flight attendant.

Kotick has long been one of the highest-paid CEOs in North America and he's not exactly going to be retiring with only a nice watch to show for his time at Activision Blizzard. A report last year suggested that he stood to make $375.3 million from the sale to Microsoft. He's also expected to receive a golden parachute payment of $14.6 million when he departs.