Beyond Transcripts: Language Nuances and Audio Signals with Carter Huffman of Modulate

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub talk with Carter Huffman, CTO and co-founder of Modulate AI, about his path from machine learning work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to building voice AI that understands conversations. Carter explains why moderation in gaming is hard because you don't want to ban players unfairly, and contrasts big foundation models with orchestrated ensembles of many tiny models that require high-quality, globally vetted data labeling. They discuss the nuance of classifying hate speech, expansion into detecting fraud and manipulation in delivery and call-center contexts, and monitoring misbehaving AI voice agents. The conversation covers why conversation is more than transcripts, possible therapeutic/telehealth uses of Modulate, analyzing data at a massive scale, and ambitions for audio generation using hierarchical edge-and-cloud approaches. The episode ends with a humorous anecdote about two factor authenticaiton failure. 00:00 Podcast Cold Open 00:48 Meet Carter Huffman 02:06 JPL Spacecraft Autonomy 04:18 From JPL to Audio AI 06:18 Why Audio Is Hard 07:44 Voice AI Use Cases 12:49 Tiny Models Orchestration 15:56 Data Labeling at Scale 17:17 Defining Toxic Behavior 18:58 Nuanced Language Moderation 20:04 Scaling Ensemble Models 21:39 GPU Crunch During Launch 22:29 Beyond Gaming Use Cases 26:03 AI Agents Gone Wrong 28:45 Telehealth and Diagnostics 30:26 Ambient Audio and Privacy 32:26 Edge Ensembles Everywhere 33:25 Audio Synthesis Ambitions 35:24 Latency Hierarchies Explained 38:10 Two Factor Key Fob Fiasco 39:14 Wrap Up and Credits

Resources:

How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com
Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/
Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/
Carter Huffman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carter-huffman-a9aba05b/
Modulate: https://www.modulate.ai/

#TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #VoiceTech #MachineLearning #MachineLearningModels #GamingIndustry #AIinnovation #Entrepreneurship #AIConversation #VoiceAssistant #LanguageModeration #GPU #LLMs #LargeLanguageModels

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