Podcasts Technology Voice in Canada Podcast The Last Interface with Brian Roemmele

The Last Interface with Brian Roemmele

Published: Feb. 19, 2019, 8 a.m.

In this episode, Teri welcomes Brian Roemmele, “The Oracle of Voice” and “The Modern Day Thomas Edison”


Welcome Brian Roemmele!

Brian is the consummate Renaissance man. He is a scientist, researcher, analyst, connector, thinker and doer. He is also referred to as the “Oracle of Voice” and is actually credited for having come up with the term “Voice First”. Over the long, winding arc of his career, Brian has built and run payments and tech businesses, worked in media, including the promotion of top musicians, and explored a variety of other subjects along the way.


He actively shares his findings and observations across fora like Forbes, Huffington Post, Newsweek, Slate, Business Insider, Daily Mail, Inc, Gizmodo, Medium, Quora (An exclusive Quora top writer for: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013), Twitter (quoted and published), Around the Coin (earliest crypto currency podcast), Breaking Banks Radio and This Week In Voice on VoiceFirst.fm that surfaces everything from Bitcoin to Voice Commerce. He recently spoke at the 2019 Alexa Conference about where voice technology is going and introduced some of his incredible ideas.

Where Voice Technology is going

  • The talk he did at the Alexa Conference was dubbed “The Last Interface” and was based on the term “What if?”
  • The Last Interface refers to the last interface that we will have with technology.
  • We type to computers because they cannot understand our volition and our intent.
  • Computers are already intelligent enough with current technology to take a user’s context and present to them the information that they are searching for. That’s the premise of The Last Interface.

Intelligence Amplification

  • Brian presented this idea by searching through history how we developed the concept of why we speak (why we developed language). He found that we did it because our brain got too large.
  • Humans had to offload memories into archival systems which became known as writing. Typing is an example of an extension of an archival system which means we are storing the things that we can’t pass on generationally on an offloaded system. Computers took over that and now we archive in systems and places like websites, Google, PDFs, and others, but it’s still an archival system and it still doesn’t transmit the volition and intent of an individual. The short term aspect is what Brian calls “The Intelligence Amplify”
  • He doesn’t fully believe in the concept of AI (Artificial Intelligence) because he doesn’t think we can fully define what intelligence is in humans and where it comes from, and therefore, we cannot artificially create it in any way, shape and form that is human like.
  • We have been trying to amplify our intelligence by archiving our world and our stories, whether they be allegorical, mythological or “factual”. Factual is as we see it today. All of our facts today will 1,000 to 10,000 years from now look allegorical to people because they will not be facts any longer, they will be seen as primitive.
  • The Intelligence Amplify takes in everything around us. How this works; in this world, with the technology that exists today, the moment you’re born to the moment you die, is a device that will have a camera and a microphone. Assume that it has the highest security you can ever imagine and it never goes on the internet (it has no internet connection). It’s recording everything you’ve ever seen, everything you’ve ever read, every comment you’ve made, every comment you’ve heard, and everything is archived. All those things will be presented to you as the basis of your AI to derive context and to understand not only your paradigm (how you make you as you because you are the sum total of the experiences, good and bad, that define us as human beings), and so it starts amplifying your intelligence.
  • During his talk at the 2019 Alexa Conference, he pointed out that the human being discards (exformation) over 99% of everything that comes through our senses.
  • With The Intelligence Amplify, the best of us can be amplified.

The Wisdom Keeper

  • When we die, everything is thrown away, but not in the world of The Last Interface, because the next stage is called The Wisdom Keeper.
  • The Wisdom Keeper (your Wisdom Keeper) is important because it is the sum total of all of your experiences, the essence of your experiences. Every human being has some wisdom to contribute to the world.
  • A person’s Wisdom Keeper will be their testament, who they were.

Listener Questions

  1. Do you feel that society is actually ready for what Brian has described (The Last Interface, The Intelligence Amplifier and The Wisdom Keeper)
  2. Will we ever be ready for the scenario that Brian is describing?
  3. Will this happen by default (is it already happening)?


  • Use the Twitter hashtag #AIC66 to tweet your responses to the questions. Feel free to ask Brian a question and I will curate those questions and ask them to Brian at a future date.

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