Voice pilling instead of keyboard: Why more and more offices are becoming mumbling zones

A new trend that can be observed more and more often in offices is so-called “voice pilling”. It describes the increasing importance of voice interaction in human-AI communication and was coined by Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of Linkedin.

In the office, this increasingly means that employees now whisper into AI-supported speech recognition tools instead of typing on keyboards.

Is whispering in the office more annoying than typing?

Why did this development happen? Dictation as an alternative to the keyboard can lead to an increase in productivity, as we know that you speak much faster than you type. Hoffman describes it this way: Once you seriously start using your voice to interact with technology, “you open up a new way to multiply your own abilities,” he wrote in a Linkedin post.

The Wall Street Journal sees more than just positive things in the development. The fact that typing is being replaced by whispering is far more annoying, as offices are becoming more and more like “high-end call centers” – and that is “just a bit strange”.

Surprising side effects of computer whispering

And it can apparently cause some pretty surprising side effects. A woman who runs an AI company said her evening mumbling at the computer at home caused tension in her marriage.

The British newspaper The Guardian reports that dictation tools often don’t work as intended and you have to go through everything again because they don’t understand you correctly. “Also, typing on the keyboard may be slower, but it allows me to put my thoughts into a form that makes sense,” writes a Guardian journalist.

Quiet offices become murmuring offices

However, AI-supported speech recognition could bring improvement. Dictation apps such as Wispr Flow promise, in combination with programming tools, to transform your unstructured scraps of thoughts into something coherent. The ideas expressed by voice should be converted into codes, emails, notes or documents.

Only time will tell whether “voice pilling” will become widespread across the board. Workplaces could also become noisy and distracting environments if everyone in the office starts talking into their computers. According to the Wall Street Journal, some once quiet offices in Silicon Valley have already turned into offices of murmurs.