Introduction: I decided to listen to a radio podcast called More or Less human? This podcast informs the audience and the listeners on the relevance of chatbot's seven years ago and the reinvestigation on them today. Brian Christian tells us that a chat bot is a "computer program that exists to mimic and impersonate human beings." An example would be how the U.S Army has a chat bot called sergeant star that recruits people or chatting with customer service on websites such as apple, verizon, shopping websites, etc. You may think the conversation is very human but it could just be with a chat box. Its hard to tell the difference, however in most cases the very beginning of your conversation with them is normally "Hello, how can I help you" or "It seems there is an issue with this", which could just be a chatbot system until a human becomes available to chat with.
4 Kinds of Audio Used in this Podcast:
1. Natural Sounds: Sound effects that are recorded in the background. They are discrete, distinct elements that require the listeners attention. In the beginning of the podcast two people were talking about an experiment they wanted to perform live. As they began to talk about this experiment there is a dramatic background sound affect at 2:32 minutes. This created a really nice feel and affect for me as a listener.
2. Ambient Sounds: Background noises that establish a sense of place. For example, there were many different times in the podcast when the audience would laugh. This almost made it seem like I was there with them and that they were really enjoying it.
3. Voice-Overs: Include any scripted narration that’s recorded, usually in a studio, to guide a storyline forward/along. For example they mention a man named Hugh Lobner who is a multi millionaire. He wanted to bring a 100 people into a room to sit at computers and chat with either a human or a bot on a screen and for them to decide which they are taking to. After this man is mentioned, at around minute 7:35 a voice over with background music comes on that goes more into detail about this experiment and how Brian Christian was actually a participate in it. This really helped to make the podcast sound more professional, easier to understand and sophisticated.
4. Interview Clips: Recordings of a story’s subject(s), typically recorded on location or over the phone. Interview sound bites help bring the characters in our stories to life. For example, in the first 6 minutes of this podcast, Brian is interviewed by our 2 hosts. He is asked questions on what a chat bot is and gives all of us a little overview on what we will be discussing in this podcast.
Radio Lab Story Arc:
In this quick video they discuss how they like to tell stories in a different type of way. They choose complicated subjects that they might not completely understand but they then try to make sense of them. They like to "have fun, experiment and do mischief." They want the listeners to create an opinion of their own at the end and figure it out themselves.
This story is definitely incorporated in the podcast that I listened to. They are asking the audience a very open ended question. Although they do some experiments to help answer this question in some way, there really will never be a direct answer. Sometimes its hard to tell if its a real human or just a bot. Its a concept that people are interested and fascinated in so they want to learn more an try to figure it out.
All in all, I really had fun with this assignment. It was great to listen to a podcast an gain more insight on an important topic and it was also great to learn about the different types of audio that are apart of a recording.
