You're listening to the identity of the sender podcast.
This is a show that talks about identity and access management
and making sure you know who has access to what let's get
started. Welcome to the identity the
center podcast I'm Jeff and that's Jim hey, Jim khf.
How are, you know, not so bad yourself.
Good good. I've got a lot on my mind these
days, there's a lot going on in the world right now and I think
a couple of the key topics for Our Generation to kind of figure
out and I don't know if we'll figure it out, but it's one of
the biggest undertones is around free speech and privacy.
And the reason why Why I tied those two together is because I
think that there's some kind of trade-off, right.
There's is not most people aren't black and white about the
topic. Like I want 100% free speech, no
controls at all. Because the other side of that
is there some speech that can cause you know, Clear and
Present dangers and the same thing with privacy it's like yes
I'm willing to give up some privacy to get some services.
But I'm not willing to go up on my privacy and it's not like,
I'm not willing to give up any data about myself.
And so, you know what I wanted to pose to you is where are you
on the Spectrum, in terms of privacy, how much of your
private data? Are you willing to give up to
get Services? It depends on the value of the
service. And then, you know, Google Maps
for example. I'm okay with location on that
because it's so helpful for Driving when it comes to
navigation, sharing location with friends or family or things
like that, I don't know if it's necessarily a black and white
decision because every service has its own value, they might
think it's more important, that it really is to me as a user.
And there really isn't a lot of discussions sometimes on what
you can. And can't, you know, switch on
or off from a privacy standpoint.
It generally the services are like, well it's either all or
nothing or more than you'd want to give up.
Exchange for that service. So I would say I'm pretty
average sure I give up some modicum of privacy but I try not
to be too crazy about it. Just you know hit allow on
everything that pops up on my phone you know asking for things
like oh does it does my calculator really need to take
pictures? Probably not.
So yeah that's that's something here.
More on like the Android side of things Android apps doing like
accept the permissions and and things like that but I think
that's kind of where I fall on it.
At least from my perspective. Yeah, I kind of feel like that
the next question is, like, what is the role of government in
terms of regulations for how much privacy should be
controlled by those laws and regulations?
I think, you know, in your PPI GDP are much more restrictive in
terms of privacy and they wind up, you know, pulling big Tech
into court and trying to control it a lot more and the United
States. It's less Rolled and kind of
Taken like a state-by-state approach, which makes things
very complex for companies to figure out.
Okay, you know, how do I deal with these things?
But I think one of the things to me, that's most annoying when it
comes to privacy, is things like when you go to a website and it
says, except our privacy policy. In other words, you cannot get
access to their service, their online service, unless you
accept. Kept the privacy policy and then
you go and you click into it and it's like, do I really want to
read this? And for some Services, you
really kind of don't have an option.
So if you have to go online to pay your utility bill or to
manage your utility bill, you know, you pretty much just have
to accept that privacy policy. I kind of the option you can
show up that at City Hall with a Jar, full of pennies and path,
that way, right? I mean you're you're Oh, making
a choice though, right? If you want to go online and
have like, online bill pay. That is a choice, you're making.
But as I don't have to share, is that, is that fair or something?
But I think, no, I think that's the root of the discussion.
I think, what do we want? This is our society
collectively, right? What do we want from, you know,
these Services, right? I mean, you know, just because
ConEd might be my electric company.
They didn't invent electricity and they don't.
And I have, I have to have electricity.
That's a certain scenario and I picking up the utility scenario
because you really don't have much choice if you want to have
electric in your home, but to use their services.
And yes, you could go down there with rolls of pennies to pay for
the service, but that's not realistic.
So in other words, your Kind of forced by.
You want to have a normal life to accept privacy policy and
then they can they can take your data now, we're talking about
services like Facebook or something like that.
I think now you've entered a different territory because
that's truly an optional service.
In most cases, there are some cases where maybe it's not, but
you know, this is Jim McDonald's own idea, right?
And I'm going to throw it out there that I think there should
be Classification standards for privacy policies and a company
should say should pick one of those privacy policy.
So, rather than saying you need to read our privacy policy and
they could stick one sentence somewhere in the privacy policy
that you don't like that. They have to comply to one of
whatever it is, 45 standard, privacy policies and then most
people can kind of understand. Okay, what are those four or
five privacy policies? And they come to can say, we're
following number 4. I mean, I think a standardized
privacy policy would be helpful, but I don't think it's conducive
to the way that the u.s. is run. You'd have 50% of the population
but yes, 50% pappu say, no and nothing would happen.
So I do think I do think maybe it is somewhat crazy but not
because it's like a crazy idea just because that's the state of
government in the u.s. at this point that's the way I'm looking
at it. Yeah.
Well that is pretty much the state of everything right now,
right? But imagine if you had to like a
standardized template, right? Sort of like a Bill of Rights
for a consumer to be able to easily understand what it is
that they're getting in exchange for what it is.
They're giving away for that right?
Instead of you have like these stupid and user license
agreement that pop up that are written and you know, legalese
and lawyer speak and hide all kinds of weird terms and
conditions on the inside that, oh, you can opt out, but it's on
page. 74 this tiny little checkbox right or you Have to
like, write in a letter. It's like, opt out at something,
like, I'd be totally in favor of like, simplifying that quite a
bit, but this is a very litigious Society.
Remember, like all the years, you've been an it and how many
eula's end-user license agreements, you've clicked
accept and didn't read, you've agreed to those contracts and I
think with privacy policies, the same thing, happens all the
time. We just don't have time to read
everyone. Well you know what losing you
know, we've been talking about MFA, right?
And my face, Pam, and this fatigue that comes with, you
know, always having to like approve these messages on my
phone to push notifications. Like, I know it's not me and it
was not me trying to get in but invariably some percentage of
population Just Hits allowed because they get tired of it.
That is exactly what we do with you was like 20 years ago at
some point, we got tired of it and we just clicked accept and
we want it right on through. So now we're doing the same
thing with I know what, LMFAO fatigue or push notification
fatigue, or whatever it is, but we've talked about it a few
times on the show. Why don't we pivot?
Well, let's I want to get to our main topic, which is voice
Biometrics a couple of housekeeping things.
Before we do get started, though this is a second last show of
the year for us. So we're going to take a few
weeks off for winter. Break 2,700 minutes of podcasts
went out this year, so I think we've earned a little bit of
time off to kind of regroup. We are working on some pretty
cool stuff for 2023. So we'll hit episode Red pretty
early on I think probably like February maybe March at the
latest I would imagine at this point we got some conference
things that were working on so definitely, you know, people
stay tuned with that hit that subscribe or follow button.
That totally helps us out, you know, it's a free way to
basically support the show so that is highly encouraged.
I've got to tell you a quick story.
So I was in the airport the other night and I was talking
with Wayne and somebody was like like He's dropping on her
conversation. I mentioned to Wayne about the
the podcast and so this guy turns around sarcastically off
the podcast. I spent like 15 minutes
explaining the podcast and he was like all he wanted to find
it on his podcast app and everything.
He's like, I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna listen, I'm like all right
great leave us a five-star rated.
He's like, well I'll have to listen to podcast first.
Well, yeah, I was like, oh yeah. Well, you just took him for like
15 minutes. I time, dude.
I think you owe me something. Yeah, leave a rating.
Five stars is always preferred. You know, if you hate it you say
I really hate it a lot. It was five stars worth.
I hate that's fine too, right? I mean, either way is good, but
yeah, yeah, follow subscribe, so pick.
That's kind of issue. We have two stats last time,
but, like, less than half of people who routinely turned in
or actually subscribe to just tune in and hear our drivel
every week. So why don't we get to voice
Biometrics? Because they think that's kind
of where we want to take the take today's conversation.
Especially some of the areas around privacy concerns.
That kind of Jim brought up, but voice is a big part of that as
well, but I think just the technology in general is pretty
cool. I actually rolled it out two
decades now. Well, 15 years ago, let's call
it. It's kind of my first foray into
that area and I'm really happy and excited that we're able to
have our guests on with us. She is melting men.
She's a program director with Booz Allen Hamilton and a voice
biometric and an identity Zealot.
So welcome to the show, Mel, thanks for having me.
Yeah, so, You for taking the time, it's a Friday afternoon
and this is going to go live. Mondays is going to be kind of a
quick turnaround for us. And I think one of the things
that we always like to find out the first time we have someone
to show is sort of their career Journey especially when it comes
to sort of the identity work and maybe even specifically The
Voice Biometrics tough, which you've really kind of
specialized in it sounds like how did you get to where you
are? Is this, is this identity and
Biometrics area? Something that you chose?
Or did it Choose You? Little bit of both.
You know, I was in the identity space.
I'm a lot older, I think than you guys but I started my career
about 33 years ago and almost immediately jumped in.
After my webcasting phase don't judge.
It was a good one back then but then I kind of got my foray into
IDM identity, access management and I loved it but the more I
got into it the more I was able to see through Less than always
legal means the user names and passwords and eat including MFA.
They just start cutting. They're not they're so easy to
break and I don't mean that for everybody but the hacker
community in the black hats around identity it's super easy
to break pretty much anything that's out there today until you
talk about Biometrics and you know obviously iPhone or Apple.
Came out pretty staunchly with facial Rec.
I know I'm sure every one of us is done the facial dance or
you're trying to get the face and then you have to do the iris
dance and you know, it just wasn't, it wasn't feasible and
mass use and so VB voice Biometrics became hot for me.
As I saw that there was a lot more that could be done with
voice then just Identification. So obviously that's the impetus
behind the explosion of VB, but where science has at the science
Community has evolved it got super sexy.
So I rode that I'm all about the super sexy.
So yeah, we are absolutely and You know, I know we're going to
get super deep maybe we can start a look, you know, at the
basics of kind of, for those who aren't familiar with how voice
Biometrics Works, how does it work?
But then take us all the way to that privacy topic, that was
bringing up, like, is my Amazon Alexa spying on me, but let's
not go there yet. Let's start with the, you know,
has Voice. Bio generally work.
So spoiler alert. Yes, it is.
Secondly VB is it's a very slick process.
There's lots of variations and how you can deploy VB.
There are lots of various models, there's a lot of
different approaches, there's just all kinds of options
depending on a multitude of factors.
As you would imagine with any technology you got to understand
the business requirements that are supporting the operational
or the mission goals that VB needs to support.
Port. And then based on that, there
are actually options now although you wouldn't think so,
given a lot of the banks and such or still retaining audio
and they're still leveraging capabilities that are almost as
old as I am. And so things have evolved.
If anyone in the fence serve Community is paying attention.
Things have evolved. Take a second.
Look at where VB and and Biometrics are today for
identity management and fraud. Prevention.
Okay, so you said the Alexa is spying on me.
What does that mean? Are they just trying to gather?
Okay, this person needs to go and buy some new, you know, some
new cups and coffee mugs or they actually like, looking for
things and Reporting them to the police.
Yeah, so I mean they're obviously capabilities in the
intelligence community and the federal government levels that
are looking for Words keywords that, you know, your phraseology
and the mix context in which it's uttered.
But that's not really the job of Alexa as you guys were talking
about earlier, the whole privacy bit and there's a lot of trust
right now. On the containers or the the
holders of your private, your pii, your personal, identifying
information and your you got to trust and right?
And it's even devoid of having some sort of, Bill of Rights for
consumers, or what have you you literally could end up as the
South Park episode, where their Human Centipede or you are truly
being protected by the audio and the use of it that's being
captured. Mel, I kind of Wonder like, you
know, I think one of the voice applications I use the most is
Siri right? The Apple version of boy's voice
recognition and I can't believe how bad it is sometimes.
So it is what does that mean indication of?
I mean is an indication of like it could be improved, or is it
an indication of just like some of the basics of different
people talking differently? So it's the it's their Universal
Baseline model which is one of the it's like the transmission
of voice Biometrics, right? And so the more understands and
how they are, if they are, which I'm sure they are.
But I don't have specifics. But as long as they're applying
Ai and ml outside of what a white paper refers to it, as if
they're genuinely applying learning capabilities to their
Baseline construct, then that will get Mm better over time but
it's further than where they are, right?
Because, yeah, it's pretty bad. You shouldn't have to repeat
yourself. Their capabilities that are
being used in the Department of Defense today and in the
Department of Homeland Security, where lives depend on the
efficacy of that voice capture in the translation of it.
So the technology is there, it just has to be committed to by
the Vidor of the service and I don't want to, I'm not slamming
them because it is a costly Endeavor, but the fact that it
already exists, makes it less costly.
You don't have to go create it, and it's a diverse build thing.
And, you know, they have lots of tncs things to consider.
But yes, you are being spied on, but it's so I never really did
address, why, right? So it's not just to learn and
evolve their capability if they're smart, which I know at
least one of the large Voicebank holders is, they are turning you
into a predictive marketing machine, right?
So that's how they make their money is through advertisers
services. And Licensing is never where the
money's at. It's always in the services
associated with it. So they make Bank cold hard
money from the ability to predict what Jeff Steadman is
going to buy after he purchases that tent?
Is he going to be looking? For a camper, is he going to be
looking for a place in Arizona, right?
It's an amalgamation of what you're buying and how are you
searching? And what are you all totally
doing with it? Are you a giver meeting
Charities? What do we serve you to make our
platform? The most valuable to our
advertisers as we possibly can? So do they want to know that you
know you yelled at your wife and no, they don't.
Are that, although, that audio is absolutely there.
You can go here it on all platforms.
You can go and hear all of the audio that's been captured and
delete it, but that doesn't mean that it's being triple deleted
on there. And so it, once it's out there,
it's out there. But you can hear what's being
saved from your utterances. I feel like that this is where
the Ron Swanson death of him learning what a computer does
and then him just walking out to the dumpster and just throwing,
let's give her the doctor is where that might be.
That's very um, yeah, I mean, I think people, you know, if the
product is free, you're the product is kind of some kind of
way to look at it is, yeah, advertising, I'm sure I'm lumped
in with other folks, and it's just another key metric around.
Well, Jeff just by guitar and he's trying to learn how to
play. And, you know, if you are video
with me, you can see there's one of the background, I am I Suck.
So, but at some point, I'm probably gonna be looking for
lessons or maybe a guitar, sand or guitar picks, right?
And I'm in a certain age range. All of these are data points
that come together to kind of formulate, who is what is this
entity look like, and the voice Biometrics that I'm providing.
Whenever I talk to Siri Google, I'm sure you just activated a
bunch of stuff out there, right? Alexa, whatever may be all feeds
into that. What?
I find a little bit interesting is At this point, we've got Siri
at least in the consumer side of got Syrian, we've got Google, it
sounds like a Lexus. Having some issues because
Amazon is reading articles about how Alexa is not doing great and
they may shut that down or pair of back considerably, Microsoft
got out of the Cortana game a while back.
So I don't either winners and losers already in this space
when it comes to the voice side. Not really.
I think it's more the value prop ride.
So they're not seeing a Lot of Roi on the invoice, the
Investments they've made in their voice capabilities.
Primarily because in my never humble opinion, they missed the
boat on why to do it to begin with, or if you're doing it
while you're doing it for its initial intended, purpose,
expand your purview beyond what you operationally decided to
invoke or that led you to invoke the use of Voice or the creation
of that capability and they miss the boat.
So I don't necessarily say it would say that there's a player.
It's the how, right? So you could it's like I would
liken it to you. Could find a bazillion, really
good C sharp developers but if they don't know architecture,
you're not going to want them to build to be some.
It's very, it's a really crappy analogy.
I'm trying to give a better one, but my point is that It's about
Who and the experiences of the deployer and there are lots of
algorithms out there and they have multiple purposes and they
serve better and different options to the point that
there's now multi algorithmic Fusion, where, you know, there's
these eight algorithms, that nail it for most of your
Universal Baseline population, and then you put them together.
And then you, you lesson, And lessen, your false, your
duration. It takes to authenticate your
duration to time is money, especially the call centers,
right? It's like what?
I think the industry standard is a dollar, something a minute,
that's insane. Your Roi is sucked up the
minute, you get a dumb customer, right?
Are you good? And I Karen.
I think there's none of those out there and, of course not.
But when you get those, their profitability in the cost to do
business is Trashed, right? So they have to look at all the
different scenarios where they could salvage or expedite or
minimize that unpredictable expense Associated.
So, let me pivots like slightly because I want to talk about
deep fakes. And how does that impact things
like voice Biometrics? And we've seen a lot of news
headlines around it, you know. I think the whole Jordan Peele
Obama saying, what you know, was was popular.
I don't know, it seems like 10 years ago.
It was probably like to How impactful are deep audio fakes
to the efficacy of trying to do, you know, strong identification
or authentication through voice biometric.
So right now that there's a lot of dependencies there, that's a
loaded question but to date it is absolutely avoidable as the
Technologies evolve for deep things, especially around audio.
It's going to be tough. So the industry needs to be
Typically Progressive in figuring out how to stay in the
proper place for the betterment of black hats and convert them.
That's all I can start converting them now so that, you
know, as this evolves or there because I would say, we're
probably at a, at most three to five years threshold to somebody
being able to have an epic deep fake maker.
But We're not going to be able to contend with, so that's kind
of why the Department of Defense and DHS are evolving Beyond a
single biometric. So while VB is absolute, there's
so many things you can do with it when you fuse it with other
biometric. Modalities your false positives
are almost completely eliminated.
I mean, it's measurably significant.
When you talk about Multimodal. But it's complicated you know
and if they're not if they're not Progressive enough and their
dedication to Biometrics it's a tough it's a tough pitch to
make. But once you dig in and you look
at the ROI compared to a single modality, it gets much much more
palatable of a conversation to have.
You've mentioned this concept of fusion a couple times.
Can you explain what that is to my simple brain?
No you're fine. So it's really each independent
biometric modality being fused together from a score point of
view. So I've taken a score say from
your voice, I'm taking a score from your facial.
I'm taking a score from your from an old factory biometric
and I'm fusing those together to say, either your Bad guy or
infusing them together to say this guy could walk through this
door without having to present a card without it, which can be
stolen without having to do the iris stance or obfuscated with
contact lenses or violate. You know, successfully penetrate
the security measure. It makes that nearly impossible
because you may be amazing fakin one, but you're never going to
be amazing at faking free. So it allows you to set the
threshold. For entry significantly, higher
thereby, always accompanying, creating a lot more structure
and security. You said olfactory biometric.
So as at the sense of smell. Yes, it is.
The sense of smell. Okay, this is news to me, I
guess, I'm not open my Biometrics game but I didn't
realize that that was something that was out there and I, I'm
intrigued very much how stinky a person is, no, no.
So or what is it, something else UT met.
So, it's used for me A lot of purposes, but the, the entree of
olfactory came from bombs and drugs.
So you have residual that you can't wash off, right?
And so having a dog isn't always possible, who's trained to
identify, and it's difficult for them to segment between like,
I'm if you followed Casey Anthony that trial where they
said the Smell of maggots produce the same smell as a
decaying carcass to a dog. So that doesn't happen and all
Factory Biometrics. And that's what?
What drove the introduction of olfactory Biometrics, but it's
super cool because then when you get nervous, you actually emit a
smell, it's a heat sink. There's a heat sink pattern as
well that we can look at. So, when we put all that
together, we know if you're a nervous wreck, which means you
probably did something wrong. Or if you're fixing to come
shoot somebody because you've got a bomb hidden in a backpack,
you know. So, olfactory has become pretty
sweet with identifying bag. There's probably not a whole lot
and Industry were that's applicable.
I've been like the airports train stations, you know,
Transportation modalities. But yeah, it's super cool,
right? How important is the quality of
the audio with the identity of the sender?
Strive for excellent audio. Yeah but you know, when you're
here at the pregame show pregame was it's always many hurdles to
overcome. But how important is it that the
quality of the input or the recording is at a high level, to
avoid false positives? Or is that just a factor if
that's a factor you have to contend with it, right?
But it has evolved so far and doing sound separation.
And if you're have any familiarity with natural
language processing and how far that has come, that's it's
giving us a very targeted method of separating sound from voice
but in the cases of identifying fraud or Bad actors in certain
scenarios obviously in the dod, it's important to hear what's
around as much as it is to hear what they're saying, how they're
saying it. I'm so quality.
So the give Factor there is I need more audio if it's really
bad quality, as opposed to if you're sitting in this scenario
where our audio is on fleet, that's right.
I can capture you in literally a second half of audio.
But yeah, so that's where that is.
Now, if you're recording and it's like three seconds in a
subway, station is probably, maybe not enough.
Not for one time if you are in and out of different places,
like when you call your bank and want to use the audio
authentication or the voice authentication, if you've had a
cold before and if and of called into the bank, if you have
called from a Subway, if you've called from the airport standing
underneath, you know, the allowed jet engine it, learns
right. That's the machine learning
elements and beauty that is that lays in voice biometric modern,
voice Biometrics. So yeah, there's a lot of
factors there. Ma'am.
I could see you as an expert witness in a trial where you had
like three seconds of audio recorded in a subway station and
then you start running through the scientific like all right
we're 78 percent sure based on this and 48 percent.
Sure. Based on this.
And therefore, we have a 99% shortness that this is the same
person. Absolutely.
So. Okay, well I think we'd beat
that one, pretty good but I wanted to bring up kind of in
the I am space where I've run into voice Biometrics a few
times as like, hmm. I wonder if this would be a good
application. I'd like to get your opinion so
it's what we call, quote, unquote, the cleanroom scenario.
So it's the idea that we want to Do MFA, but the person who's in
the clean room, whether it's, you know, the typical like
situation where somebody's wearing like a bunny suit or,
you know, potentially it's like in our prison.
But anyway the person can't bring in their phone so you
can't send them a second Factor. The question is, is that a good
scenario to use voice because my understanding was is that like
with a lot of Biometrics you have device specificity right so
you have to go through the registration on each device.
But with boys the voice is being stored in kind of a central
location or the voice fingerprint, which is probably
just the number along, no long strand.
A am I thinking about this right?
You're absolutely right. And if you're talking about like
it, especially if you look at jail or prisons, it's a hell of
a use case, right? Because you voices absolutely
there. Everybody talks about what you
gonna do when you get a deaf person.
So I mean not that that happens all the time but there is
something to be said about that being a perfect case for Fusion
because not only Will you identify you'll be able to tell
if they have bad intentions. So if somebody's coming in and
they're hiding something, you know, even the best people
readers there's always someone who's going to be better more
Charming or more effective at getting something in.
That's bad, it's super cool. Use case for biometric Fusion.
So I think that that kind of Central Storage of the
fingerprint of The Voice, Just kind of one of the advantages
are differentiators between VB and other forms of Biometrics,
but I think the other thing is, you know, in a lot of those
scenarios. If somebody's wearing a bunny
suit right there, they're not going to be able to do a
fingerprint, they're not going to be able to necessarily do
facial recognition, things like that.
So it might be one of the few scenarios where boys are voice.
Might be one of the few options. And I guess what I'd like to
also ask is, you know, are there other use cases that you see
voice? Use them a lot for
authentication? Where it makes sense other than
fin serve well. So, so good.
Tell me what you mean, by that Financial Services.
No, I'm sorry, I need that part. What do you mean in terms of
using voice for Finn serve as that?
Just like when you call the call center sometimes but like Bank
of America, for example. As doing, I don't know if they
have rolled it out, nationally or globally yet, but they've
created banking centers that don't have people.
So you can literally walk up to a screen that is about below
your waist to probably depending on your height.
Of course. For me, it's like a foot over my
head. So I would say it's probably a
four or five foot tall screen with AI, it has an artificial
agent, on the other side, and I don't have to authenticate, I
exist. So that I never saw some in the
near, the subway stations on Broadway in New York City.
There's a couple in Columbus, we're such a test a test Market,
it's silly. We get the first flavor of lays
when they first release it to see how we do, which can be good
or bad depending on all right. Exactly.
Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavored Doritos.
No, thank you. Anyways, so they they the use
case there is wicked cool because You literally don't have
to do anything but walk in and conduct your business.
It's a sweet use case if you think about applying that theory
to something like Walmart think of how Walmart could use that
from a predictive marketing point of view.
So they follow a pattern of life, right?
Or pattern of your existence throughout a store.
They have security cameras anyway.
So use that data, right? So, watch where they're going
and what are they buying? And then, Order.
And so what would they like Leah by an Impulse buy at the
register? Or you noticed when these
products are close to these products and this one gets
purchased because it's right behind them and increased sales
of these items. So it's we got to stop thinking
that it's just about authentication.
It's about making I'm a capitalist.
Can you tell? It's making money and it's
making me. Money more effectively, which
would drive costs down. I think the economic
ramifications are pretty big. If we get out of our own way and
stop worrying about the false connotation of Biometrics, being
an invasion of privacy, because it's not, we're not holding your
voice. We're retaining your audio.
We're triple hashing. Creating a big long.
Number that if you stole it, even if I send it to you, you
would not be able. First identify, even that it's
yours. All right, so there is no pii
involved in. VB it just It Isn't.
So once we get out of that and stop worrying about that, then
we could talk about what can really be done with by my church
soapbox off. So what about scenarios where
you definitely do not want to use like the opposite, right?
We talked about a couple use cases here where yeah makes
sense, you know, prison or a jail or financial services or Or
retail in general. We think being able to walk up
and say, hey, I want to know about a quarter pounder with
cheese. Only onions and fries and a
coke, right? Rather than talking to a person,
which appears to be going by the wayside, or going after those
one stupid little iPads and keying in your own order, right?
The might actually have the order, right?
So I'm good right? Yeah, I'm okay with that part 2.
But what's the opposite of this? Like, where did where is voice
Biometrics never to be used? I don't think it exists.
There's no scenario where it just doesn't make sense, to
apply voice Biometrics as part of the authentication string or
the identification not for me. Even I like a loud loud.
Place quiet place place maybe with a lot of voices like an
airport or a subway station. No isolation false, anything
like that we already do it, right?
There's a there's an effort that was done by the Air Force and
and the Department of Defense is SNT program which is their
science and Technology. It's kind of like the evaluation
space for the Department of Defense where they literally can
authenticate a pilot standing at his aircraft while it's running
the they can do all kinds of Funky Cold Medina stuff.
Now that I can't think of a single scenario where it would
not be a relevant possibility, okay.
How about it might be capable but what point does the cost?
The benefit are these scenarios where it's super expensive to
have, you know? Okay.
Well do we really need to be able to identify a pilot outside
of his F-16 while the engines are running?
Yes, you can imagine if that's cheap to do not see.
It's well that would not be on the heavier side of cost.
It's really what what drives cost and biotin voice.
Biometrics speed speed to authenticate the thresholds
you're willing to accept. Depth.
And then that's about it. That's probably it speed and
accuracy or those metrics that a buyer of software can really
gauge or get that information from a software vendor.
So if I'm in the market for a VB solution, are those the things
that I should be looking at and are they metrics that the vendor
will Provide and I can rely on their answers.
Okay, well I got me until you threw in the end telling the
truth part. Yeah.
So I mean there's a lot of variation there too.
It's kind of like I feel like I'm not giving you any straight
answers but it's true. I mean, when you look at, if
you're in the market for VB solution, you need to solidly
understand why and what are your requirements meaning like, do I
have an alternative flow that It's less expensive if I give up
but a percentage or if I require a little slightly longer
elongation of audio acquisition. You got to look at all that
before you have the conversations of percentages.
But like in a, in a financial entity, you're not going to want
anything less than 99.9% by even would prefer a hundred, but 100
isn't gonna happen, but if I can acquire a positive ID, A hundred
and a hundred percent confidence in three seconds.
I'm n. But if it's 30 seconds, which I
know some banks are still on that old Antiquated technology
where I got to run my mouth and tell you 5 times.
How much I love my to use my voice as my password.
No, thanks. Not going to happen.
I'm just gonna hit zero like a vicious lie right that.
No, that's clearly annoying but I guess I want a clarification
on that. So is it 30 seconds if I know Oh
okay. It's claiming to be Mel dial and
so I just have to check this boys against what I know for Mel
or is it? You are one of my 200 million
customers and now I have to use your voice to figure out, which
of those two hundred million customers.
Are you therein lies? The rub gym?
That is absolutely. The differentiator
algorithmically is inclusionary logic versus exclusionary logic
and the voice Biometrics algorithmic approach, It sounds
like it wouldn't make any difference but when you look at
it scientifically, the data is there that if I already know you
exist, like if there was a global voice biometric database
of everyone to authenticate anything then it's going to be
100%. Inclusionary logic meaning can I
I don't even look to see if you're excluded from the data
set. Exclusionary logic is Is where
they look at it and say. So can I exclude her from being
any other entity than Mel demon and so that algorithmically and
how you forge? The process is where that
becomes a differentiator so what's next for voice
Biometrics? Like what's the cool thing
coming up that we need to be aware of so it's here but
sentiment and intention are wicked.
And now it's here but it's not widely used yet.
I think it's worth looking at. If you're in an industry, there
are so many use cases. Where sentiment and phraseology
is really under estimated right now.
There's a lot of value there even if it's good versus bad or
if it's there really irritated or they say they're irritated,
they're really not or They make a false claim.
It's not like a lie detector but if you're multimodal fusing you
absolutely have a lie detector capability and multimodal fused
Biometrics. So it depends on your industry
of course. But sentiment phraseology is
wicked cool. And that is the factor.
Allowing that deception versus well-intended in the Also, the
biometric I've kind of seen that that sentiment in some recent
Sci-Fi films, and TV shows that it watching.
It's like, you know, you have the scanners, I call the
person's lying, just by the way, they're talking, how do you
establish sentiment? Like how does a normal person do
this? Or is it just the massive amount
of data that's out there and correlating it across the other
modes? That is not my area of
expertise. There's a couple wicked cool
scientists who are doing nothing but that and that the only
company I know right now who's really nailing it is next video
which was bought by nice systems.
They're the only company I've seen that has truly made some
strides there and how do you send him outside of the
government space? It's used all over and
government but for different purposes but the industry talk
to the scientists over a next idea.
Okay. I think it's probably a show
topic. Maybe 2023 given where we're at
right now in the air. Yeah.
I think I'm deaf agreed that one out.
What about AI when it comes to voice Biometrics?
And the use cases, I'm thinking here is data from Star Trek, a
walking talking Android that is a, you know, symbol chroma of a
human being. Do you think at some point that
they would have their own vows biometric?
Or would it be maybe something else behind this?
Seems like micro service API calls based on Bluetooth or
Wi-Fi. Signals that the robot is
generating or things like that, I would.
So I would say the capabilities exist today.
I know that there's a couple a eyes that are fully functional
and can do voice activated things.
But I guess the question is should they?
And how far do you want to take that?
But how that happens, it's going to evolve but at this point I
would say it can be on board. Absolutely, you can have on
board until robots, take over the world and we have to all
Will Smith mute so there's I don't know.
Remember the name of it there's it's all over the place right
now where it mostly actually in them and asia-pac region where
they're generating whole songs. Whole artists 100% with AI.
But I'm too old to remember the name and this is full-on
original. I guess.
Scores or songs or interesting upgrade.
Yeah, I've seen them do. I've heard my daughter's really
into this and I've heard EDM, I've heard an opera singer.
The who wasn't really officer was an AI.
I've heard, what's that? You said have ever leader Jim.
What's the name of that genre of music?
Are they country top? No, I didn't hear country.
I forget. But it's like an evolved gen Z
genre of music. But I forgive you yet, so it's
super cool. It's there and it's only going
to get better. This is that is the Fidelity of
that audio there or is it still mechanical sounding?
Oh, no. Not even a little bit
interesting. So I think when the yeah,
gotcha, well I think when, you know, You can take data points
and big data and crunch it all together.
I mean, they already know like beats for a minute what people
like and what, you know, how to construct songs, so that people
are attracted to them. Now, take that and start taking
what kind of voices people are tend to like and you mix all
that together and hit the themes that people like and now all of
a sudden you just have an algorithm algorithmically you
know made to be popular. Or song or even just customized
right to a person's flavor profile.
Yeah, now when I like our EDM Jim likes this country, right?
We're going to have different opinions over everything at
different point. Why you are our own unique
listening sound pattern, right? We could essentially generate
audio on the Fly that matches with our mood or whatever our
preferences. Our I think that is fascinating.
It is fascinating, it's like Spotify unwrapped on steroids
basically. Yeah.
All right, you we've been talking awful lot here.
I want to close out on a lighter note and got a couple options.
And the one that I'm going to pick here, is you have your own
late-night talk show who do you invite as your first guest
melting? Then it's the melting man show
hearing, I don't know every night at end on NBC.
Who's your first guest on your new show?
Do they have to be alive? No II didn't specify so you can
pick. Anybody want really, Jeff?
That's hard. I would have like a hundred and
twenty people. Pull off the bat that I would
say. I want to pick one or maybe pick
a wine up two or three guests. All right.
I would want Harriet Tubman because she was a badass, I
would want George Washington. And then modern day, I would
want. The creators of South Park,
Matt. And was that Matt Striker?
Interesting. Yeah, okay.
That's a lot years. That's a strong opening night,
right? I didn't think of historical
figures. I my mind went right to Elon
Musk. Oh, he's I have such a
girl-crush on him. Oh, be still my heart.
Yeah, that's that's my choice. What about you Jeff?
Yeah, I'm torn. So I'm going to pick two and
cheat. That's why I gave Mel cover to
pick whatever she wanted. I'm going with George Carlin.
As the opening guess and then Jon Stewart is sort of on the
bench there as well. Hurry up, that's who I would
start with why I'm a fan of comedy, and I think it would be
just a fascinating conversation, given how popular Carlin has
been for decades, especially even him and he passed away, you
know, few years back. But he's still such an influence
for a lot of comics and a lot of the genres of Comedy that are
out there now, feed off of sort of that, you know, not
necessarily Political but socio, societal kind of observations
and things like that. And I think Jon Stewart took it
to more of the political level of it, which I thought was just
hilarious. And I can, I could I could watch
The Daily Show from from years and years on end.
And Trevor Noah, you know, was his last show was last night, so
we were watching that one last night, but I would go with
George Carlin and Jon Stewart as the two that I would have on
there and then somebody historical.
I think would be cool to have like Abraham Lincoln.
You know what movie were you gonna go see things like that.
What movie? Yeah, movies back then I've got
a, I've got a share, my George Harlem story.
So yeah, one of my co-workers 15 years ago or something this guy
was hilarious and name was Patrick Gibbons and his father
was a drill sergeant in the Marines.
So you think like his dad must have Have been some kind of
like, you know, jerk like really, like overbearing and I
just couldn't imagine because this guy was just so funny.
Well, turns out his father, the drill sergeant in the Marines,
when he was a kid was best friends with George Carlin.
Nah. Yes.
As friends that grew up together and some guy like everything,
mr. George Carlin here.
Yeah. You know, I guess six degrees.
Exactly. I don't have the anti three
degrees now, right? Yeah, because I'm Jimmy, right,
we're both connected. Yeah.
We're not hit the same rank my all right.
One of my Idols. So I think I think we'll go
ahead and leave it there for this week Mel you been really
generous to the time I want to ask for two more minutes.
What is something that people should take away from this
conversation about voice Biometrics?
If anything going in wrapping up 22 going into 2023, what do I
need to know? Biometrics is not a privacy
concern. It's not pii.
And number two, use it. There's a use case for it
everywhere, the end. Okay.
Do you need two minutes Jimbo yourself?
Final thoughts for this week? Yeah.
My final thoughts are, I reached out to Mel on a, you know, I saw
her connected to Becky archambault at Gartner.
It didn't know Mel from, you know, anybody else or reached
out super awesome person, Person.
I think you reach out to her and make a connection.
But also, I mean, I would encourage you to take a chance
and anybody who's out there who you think you'd like to, you
know, make a connection with not to try and sell them something
please. But just to, you know, spark
that conversation or be connected and follow them or
whatever, go for it. Well, the worst they can do is
blow you off or black, you disconnect?
Yeah, that hurt over it. Yeah, there you go.
No, I think, you know, I think it's okay to ask for help right.
There are the problems that a lot of us face especially in any
space have probably been solved before.
Right. And then the stronger, your
network is the more people, you know, and more people that you,
that, you know, and that they know can help you get to that
answer quicker, right? We don't need to solve
everything for the first time, so yeah, ask for help.
I think that's ask for advice, right?
See how other people are doing? That's why I'm a big fan of
organizations like ID Pro, for example, and the slack Channel
they have, right? And you know, this podcast will
bring all kinds of viewpoints, you know, to, to the conscious
level. Hopefully, if you're not already
subconscious after listening. So, that's, I think, you know,
be aware of that. And I think Mel if you're cool
with it, we typically will put our guests LinkedIn connection
into our show notes. And if they have questions, they
can reach out and you know, maybe tell you that you're
wrong, or maybe that you're right, or maybe somewhere in
between, right. I've been wrong.
It's rare but it happens go to you.
If you tell Mel she's wrong, expect a response.
Probably a scientific way. Over analysed one.
Okay we're gonna go ahead and leave it for this week.
Want to thank everyone for listening and you can find us on
the web by Danny at the center.com.
We're on Twitter so far still at idac podcast and yeah with that
we'll go ahead and leave it for this week mellow thanks you so
much for taking the time. Jim as always thanks for the
time and we'll talk with everyone.
One in the next one. Thanks for listening to the
podcast. If you like what you heard,
don't forget to subscribe and visit us on the web and identity
at the center.com.