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It was such a privilege and joy to be able to interview Mark Cuban last year for the Season Finale of Season 3 of This Week In Voice.
Cuban unloaded a lot of insight over the nearly hour-long interview, and it’s worth revisiting some of the key points he made.
1) Early on in the interview, I asked about Alexa vs Google Assistant, which one(s) he uses, and what it might take to switch from one to another.
He noted he doesn’t use Google Assistant due to having numerous accounts and having trouble getting the devices to handle them with ease, so he primarily uses Alexa.
But what’s interesting is how he describes what it would take to get him and his family to switch from Alexa to something else:
It’s a great question, because the incumbents always have the advantage. There has to be something compelling that makes me say ‘you know what, this is something that’s uniquely better.’ I’ve seen the results showing Google Home is better than Amazon Alexa, but it’s hard, as a customer, to experience that. You don’t know what you don’t know.
So there has to be something that simplifies the transition, and made it so there was some compelling reason to switch.
Everything Mark explains in the sequence that starts around the 2 minute mark dovetails with this letter from last week, discussing how contextual AI will drive next-generation experiences that indeed can get someone to switch ecosystems.
2) Right at the 10 minute mark, I make a joke about Facebook Portal and share a laugh with Mark about how, in essence, no one is buying them.
Which, at that point in time, they weren’t.
Well, about that…take note of the dates of the two articles below…
Mark Cuban laughing at the complete and total ineptitude of the Facebook Portal (I was laughing right along with him):
And then:
Oops.
The pandemic accelerated adoption of voice and AI to such an extent, people forgot all their privacy concerns and bought up all the Facebook Portals!
You can’t win ‘em all.
3) Around 17:50, I ask what a 21-year-old college student Mark Cuban would be doing right now with voice technology to build wealth and impact.
He answered with three things he would be doing:
Build Alexa skills for businesses, for cheap, just to build a reputation, get some cash flow going, and learn the technology.
Learn “voice SEO,” or what sorts of techniques and approaches cause Amazon, Google, Samsung, etc to positively refer traffic to your voice experience, versus which approaches don’t cause this to happen.
Optimize voice for hotels and lodging businesses. Cuban describes a big need with hospitality to have voice replace other sources of information that travelers often need upon their arrival.
4) At 40:32, Cuban discusses what he calls “algorithmic integrity,” and makes the case for transparency in AI models moving forward. In order to have public trust in technology that brings contextual automation, what’s under the hood needs to be available to anyone interested in looking. Great part of the conversation here.
I often pay attention to other podcasts that Mark Cuban visits as a guest, and in this one, hosted by entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano, Cuban suggests a tax on “robotics” and companies that dominate AI, mainly as a way to even out the labor impact. This 3-minute discussion is worth checking out as well.
I told him, toward the end of the interview, I’d gladly vote for him if he ran for President (he’s been linked to both major parties in the US). Even despite the fact his Mavericks wrecked my favorite player LeBron’s title chances back in 2011.
Maybe, at this rate, by the time he gets elected and takes the White House, we’ll all be talking to each other on Facebook Portals.
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