The Augmented City Podcast

Steve Koenig, Vice President of Research for the Consumer Technology Association provides a glimpse into the trends and numbers behind Web3 and Metaverse technologies. Recorded live at Goya Studios during the Infinity Festival Hollywood 2022.

This is a conversation about synthetic biology. What's needed to jump from the laboratory to the factory floor? My guest is Joshua Lachter, the co-founder and chief business officer for Synonym, a New York based company financing and helping source production capacity for synthetic biology companies. Joshua and I take a pretty broad based hike into synthetic biology. What is it? How do we use it today? What's the core science? What opportunities ahead, and what challenges must be overcome to get there? Dig in.

John McInnes: Make Movies with Game Engines by The Soundcasting Network

Brent Friedman: When the Audience is the Creator by The Soundcasting Network

Alyssa Martino: Podcasts, Books and Film Converge by The Soundcasting Network

Beini Huang: A Visual Take on Podcasts by The Soundcasting Network

Remington Scott: Virtual Humans and the Future of Identity by The Soundcasting Network

Steve Read: Virtual Production Transforms Content Creation by The Soundcasting Network

Stephanie Arakelian: Dare to Stretch Podcast Boundaries by The Soundcasting Network

Zack Lipovsky: The Podcast/Film Nexus by The Soundcasting Network

Brian Storm: Know Your Audience, Own Your Content by The Soundcasting Network

Steve Masur: Protecting Your IP As It Evolves by The Soundcasting Network

In Part II of our series on synthetic media, we explore the impact of AI-powered content creation with Ian Beacraft, the CEO of Signal and Cipher. Synthetic media offers new opportunities for non-specialists to express their ideas in ways they never imagined. Professional creators gain superpowers to scale their work like never before. And like all powerful technologies, synthetic media is bound to be misunderstood and even misapplied until people focus on use cases that truly make sense.

We met Theresa E. Gonzales at Podcast Movement 2022 in Dallas, TX. There, she and Noelle Silver gave a presentation called "AI and Podcast Advertising: How to Reach a $3 Trillion Market". To be sure, the key words got me inside the room. But once there, I heard a lot more -- especially how some of the biggest brands miss out by the widest margin. Even as AI technology works as advertised, the in-built biases in AI training data mean large swaths of people are effectively invisible online. Their needs and voices don't break through or are depicted in perverse ways. Simultaneously, underrepresented populations wield significant economic spend in the overall economy. In a nutshell, driving inclusivity into AI training data isn't just the right thing to do. It's also the smart thing to do to find new markets and serve them better.

We speak with Ian Beacraft, the CEO and Chief Futurist at Signal & Cipher out of Chicago. Ian is an internationally recognized expert in synthetic media and its impact on across industries, not just media & entertainment. In Part 1, Ian provides an overview of synthetic media, why it burst upon the scene, the categories and who's using it. Part 2 will focus on the impact of synthetic media on creators and the creative industries.

We interview Devin Finley, voice actor and professional model, and Natalie Monbiot, Head of Strategy for Hour One, about the process of transforming a human performer into a synthetic character. We discuss the creative process, the studio shoot, the business arrangement, and the creative branding by a New York actor to become an AI-generated synthetic character for use in a text-to-video service for enterprises and brands. DISCLOSURE: The Augmented City is working with both Devin and Natalie to bring AI Devin to Season 2 of our audio fiction series "Burner Face", which will begin production in late 2022.

Nelson Mandela once said, "If you speak to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you speak to a man in his own language, that goes to his heart." The Augmented City podcast dug into that idea from the viewpoint of synthetic media with Alex Seriduk, the CEO of Respeecher. Based in Ukraine, Respeecher uses AI and Deep Learning to enable *Speech-to-Speech* synthetic voices. NFL Football fans heard Respeecher's work during the 2021 Superbowl when the voice of Vince Lombardi was re-imagined for a motivational message about prevailing over Covid-19. Star Wars fans experienced the voice of a 20 year old Luke Skywalker delivered by 68 year old Mark Hamill courtesy of Respeecher. Alex and John explore those use cases while covering some of the ethical and practical considerations for working with synthetic voices.

If Aliens landed on a university campus, which department would they visit first? We speak with Dr. Hollis Robbins, who makes the case for the Humanities as that "go-to" source of knowledge about people and what makes them tick. Hollis is a dean and a professor, a poet and a futurist, plus the founder of Sci Fi Talk, a 40000 member community of science fiction enthusiasts who meet on Clubhouse most Sunday nights. Hollis and John use Sci-Fi as a jumping off point to explore how the Humanities will evolve in a hotter and more Covid-normal future.

Every day, billions of people, and hundreds of billions of transactions, depend on security based around public key infrastructure (PKI) --- the cryptographic paradigm that underpins the Internet. From electronic commerce, to streaming movies, to banking, or looking for a soul mate online, the building blocks for participating in daily life are increasingly online and interactive. PKI is the "bit-based" (1s and 0s) computer security model that enables this lifestyle. Enter Quantum Computing, which is not based on 1s and 0s. Quantum Computing harnesses properties of sub-atomic physics to be a "qubit-based" (1---Everything-in-between---0) computing paradigm. Which computer would you bet on to crack the largest crypto-keys? We spoke with Skip Sanzeri, the chief operating officer of QuSecure to get a grounding in quantum computing, and how it will transform the security landscape for decades to come. This show will help you learn the difference between a classical and quantum computer. You'll understand how this difference relates to cryptography and digital life. You'll hear what's being done by government and industry to respond. What new benefits come along with the new risks. And where people can go to learn more about quantum computing.

We sit down with Shyamala Prayaga, founder of the Digital Assistant Academy and product owner of digital assistants for Ford Motor Company. In this conversation, we focus on the Digital Assistant Academy, which brings a use-case and craft orientation to conversational design for chatbots, virtual assistants and many other combinations. Which skills do people need to become successful designers in this exciting new space? How are organizations responding to the demand for conversational design? We unpack these questions and more.