Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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Synthetic voice technologies are increasingly passing as human. But today’s voice assistants are still a far cry from the hyper-intelligent thinking machines we’ve been musing about for decades. In this episode, we explore how machines learn to communicate—and what it means for the humans on the other end of the conversation.

We meet:
Susan C. Bennett, voice of Siri
Cade Metz, The New York Times
Charlotte Jee, MIT Technology Review

Credits: This episode was produced by Jennifer Strong, Emma Cillekens, Anthony Green, Karen Hao and Charlotte Jee. We’re edited by Michael Reilly and Niall Firth.