Zackary Clarke

Wow! I loved watching this video! I have never heard of Google Duplex before, but that video was really amazing. When I read the title of this, I assumed it was going to be similar to Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa. The Google Duplex differs from Siri or Alexa because it is much closer to a real personal assistant since it can make actual phone calls on someone’s behalf. Even when the call doesn’t go as expected, such as in the second demonstration, Google Duplex was able to handle the unexpected responses and maintain a graceful manner. People would rather talk to a real human than a robot, so it is great that the way the Google Duplex speaks sounds like a real human. The person on the other end of the line will not even feel like they are talking to a robot! Google is doing something revolutionary here with this AI.

As much as I like Duplex and the intentions, I think it would be better if there was an on screen service like an online booking system. I tested the duplex feature on my google pixel, it works quite well, i get a few spam calls which i just let the duplex system reply on its own, you can also select what the system will say to the caller as well. I’d love this feature for those calls /places that routinely put me on hold or for when I’m working and I’m too busy to make the call myself.

This is such a great application of blockchain technology! Often times this word is thrown around by people who don’t really understand what it means. I think this has caused people to think that you can use blockchain to do almost everything. While this of course isn’t the case, healthcare is a really great practical application. If any doctor would be able to access a patients records from their whole life, they would be able to offer more full and complete care.

One question I do have is in regards to privacy. With regulations such as HIPAA, I wonder if the public nature of a blockchain would become an issue. Since anyone can make changes or additions to the ledger, this could be raised as a concern.

Blockchain is revolutionizing the healthcare industry, especially in the pharmaceutical distribution industry. In my previous internship at AmerisourceBergen, I was tasked with researching how blockchain could benefit the company. I found out that it is a great source of tracking legal drugs and can effectively eliminate the black market for illegal drugs. Using blockchain technology, every single drug transported is accounted for and can not be tampered with, so it is an effective way to securely track drugs.

David McCandless presents how data can be used in a way to explore interesting ideas that we don’ t usually think about. He explains how powerful data is, and if we can ask the right questions when organizing data, we can discover some cool things.