Stuttering AI-Gaming Magic with Erich Reiter

Today, we are happy to share a fascinating conversation with speech recognition scientist, speech and language pathologist, and CEO of Say It Labs, Erich Reiter. James chats with Erich about the founding of Say It Labs, a company that develops speech...
Today, we are happy to share a fascinating conversation with speech recognition scientist, speech and language pathologist, and CEO of Say It Labs, Erich Reiter. James chats with Erich about the founding of Say It Labs, a company that develops speech recognition-based
video games designed for people with speech disorders. They also talk about how AI integration into these video games is such a huge benefit for both SLPs and those using the games, as well as some of the science behind the causes of stuttering and why it’s important to understand. Join us for this deep dive, info-packed discussion.
Contact Mai Ling: MLC at mailingchan.com
Contact James: James at slptransitions.com
Erich Reiter - Say It Labs
[00:00:00]
And also, um, I know we're already recording, but just to prove a point that we have a lovely producer jd, so Eric, if you wanna restart something, um, just we can keep going and just be like, oh, let me rephrase. That's the beauty of not doing it live. So Perfect. Can edit it out later. Thank you. Okay, cool.
Sure.
Today we're joined by Eric Reer, CEO, and co-founder of Say IT Labs, a social impact company. Eric has a background in computational linguistics and communication disorders or speech language pathology, and Eric has pioneered AI based speech recognition, speech recognition, technology winning multiple innovation awards for his ground big.
Well see now I'm kinda stuttering. That's, that's good. I start that [00:01:00] over. Today we're joined by Eric Reer, CEO, and co-founder of Say IT Labs, a social impact company with a background in computational linguistics and communication disorders or speech language pathology. Eric has pioneered ai, speech recognition, technology winning multiple innovation awards for his groundbreaking work, and helping people with speech and language disorders express themselves with ease, especially with stuttering and fluency.
Hi Eric. Thank you so much for coming on The Exceptional Leaders Podcast. James, nice to meet you. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So Eric, as I mentioned in that intro, your educational background is quite unique. You have a master's in both computational linguistics and communication disorders. And looking at your LinkedIn before this interview, it looks like you started, say, at Labs, um, right.
Kind of one year after you finished your degree in speech language pathology. And that got me thinking, you know, when did this all come into your mind? Can [00:02:00] you walk us through that journey? Like what inspired you to pursue this combination of studies and Yeah. What, what point were you like, I'm gonna start a company?
Yeah, no, it's, um, so this one started even before then. Um, back in. 2012. So I was working as a speech recognition engineer, uh, for nuanced communications, the original makers of Siri and, uh, dragon and, you know, just amazing stuff for speech recognition. And I loved that world of a SR, that's the short term, automatic speech recognition.
Just loved that world. I loved that space. I had this feeling that. Speech recognition would be a ubiquitous tool in every part of life, whether you're going to use internet of things for opening cars or doors. Um, speech recognition for phones, which became true for many people, not for everyone. Um, it was just a passion.
And one of my, uh, friends, seven years into my speech recognition career, unfortunately, had a diagnosis of a LS and within a couple of [00:03:00] years, he couldn't talk anymore. So I remember the day that Chris needed three minutes to say, I need water. He was using an A a C device, an alternative and augmented communication device, which I knew nothing about.
I had no idea what that machine was. I just knew that it took him a long time to use and the idea. Well, it was kind of born out of his pain. Like a lot of really innovative ideas, a lot of innovative ideas are born on the edges of, um, of, of these, um, of these. Uh, standard deviation curves. And if you, if you look at the zeroth percentile, that one percentile, um, that's usually where people are really on the fringes.
And I, I've learned that if you go down there, you'll see some really dark stuff and beautiful things can blossom from that. So, um, I spent 10 years working as a speech recognition engineer. Then I went back to [00:04:00] school, went to school in Boston to become a speech and language pathologist. And while working with kids, while working with adults and really learning the trait, I recognized that I could combine my engineering knowledge, my speech recognition knowledge and really have an impact for people who were having challenges with their speech in a real impactful way.
Um, how did that really come about? You know, if you go, if you're in a speech language pathology session with kids, it's awesome. Um, I'm the type of guy who would literally throw my body across and get, that was how I got my workout. That's how I stayed in shape. Yes. But the problem was for those 30 minutes while I was working one-on-one with that kiddo, I had no idea what they were doing for the rest of the week.
There was no way for me to check if they were truly practicing. Of course, they always say they practice the next week, but, um. You couldn't verify it, you couldn't verify how much they were practicing. So I [00:05:00] always found it compelling that, you know, we have technology that can, um, assist, assist all kinds of people with different, with all different needs.
My background in speech technology made me think I could create something. Um, I came up with the idea of video games. Kids love playing video games. Um, it's sort of a hook, it's a motivational tool that you can practice well beyond the therapy clinic and then. You can, you know, you can keep track of that data and see how fast a kid is playing or, or how much they're playing or how fast they might be making progress.
Um, either on their, their, you know, whatever their speech goals might be. But I felt that that would be an extraordinary path to pursue because no one was really doing it. Um, back when I started, say IT Labs in 2019. That's amazing. Yeah. I love how it sounds like it's just kinda an organic progression between your interests and man, you were right on the money that the internet of things would take off.[00:06:00]
That was a smart prediction. Um, but I, I can really relate to your experience too because, um, my background in speech language pathology, um, but my background before that was kind of doing marketing. So I was kind of this meandering career with many interests. But I remember thinking the same thing in, in grad school thinking.
Man, there's so much we can do here that hopefully can scale the speech therapy clinic beyond the clinic walls. And then getting out in the field, having that same kind of frustration, like, oh, did you do your speech, you know, exercises I gave you? No, Mr. Burgess, I, I honestly, I did not. I, um, I, you know, I was bored or it just seemed not that fun to me.
So you've captured something with this intrinsic motivation. And I like that you said it was at the fringes. You know, these, these, these dark, sometimes dark problems, um, that mass attention or mass companies don't look at even because they don't think it's a big enough market perhaps. [00:07:00] But stuttering affects, what is it 1% of the global population or roughly 70 million people?
Yeah, well the last I looked, uh, 80 million people was the last number I saw. I mean, 1% were 8 billion. And, uh, that's a big number. And, you know, um, when we got into stuttering, it wasn't, um, it wasn't the initial, uh, place where we thought we would go. Um, we were creating some technology to automatically detect the severity of people's intelligibility from a stroke.
So it was very, very different. But we had met. At the ASHA Conference in LA back in 2017, um, some of the, at that time, members of the American, of, of the executive, uh, the executive members of the American Board of Fluency, fluency Disorders. And we had really interesting discussions about stuttering. Um, what is stuttering?
How do you treat stuttering? And I remember [00:08:00] thinking, you know, this is one area that I was really not. Familiar with not really strong. And even I had a class on fluency disorders and the only thing I remember learning was okay. Um, either you help people accept their stutter or you work on relaxing and speaking slowly, but I felt ill equipped to treat them beyond that.
And I remember having my first fluency kid, and he was somebody who really wanted to work on his motor speech skills. I was just unequipped for it. Interestingly, Asha, every few years sends out a survey to SLPs asking What is their, what is the area of of our field that you're least comfortable treating?
And fluency disorders often surfaces, often surfaces to the top because we just don't see a lot of fluency kids, um, a lot of the time on caseloads, especially in the schools. And, um, I just remember seeing how frustrated some of these kids were. Uh, when I met with the people from the American Board of [00:09:00] Fluency Disorders, they said, well, you know, there's other areas that we can, there's other ways we can treat it.
And I had learned a lot about, at that point, the neurology of stuttering. There's some amazing researchers at in Boston, Frank Gunther at University of Michigan, SueAnn Chang and PM and in Sweden. These are people doing neural research on stuttering, on what happens in the brain when people stutter. And I found that work compelling.
Um, so you know, when you, when you dig deeper and you go into that research, you work with fluency specialists. You get some privileged insight into ways that you can maybe treat beyond what you just normally learn in school. I mean, after all, an SLP education is only two years, it's a two year master's degree, and I know that's just so much information to stuff into two years.
So, um, you know, a lot of us just aren't equipped for the things we just don't see frequently. Yeah, that. Yeah. Well said. Um, those were always some of my favorite cases though, 'cause that you have that psychology and the creativity with it. Um, you [00:10:00] mentioned stuttering modification and then the acceptance and then the fluency shaping sort of these two philosophical camps where stuttering modification, I think is more about, yeah, acceptance and stuttering.
Avoiding the stutter. You never wanna avoid. 'cause that just exacerbates, uh, what you resist persists. I like that phrase. Um, but tell me more about like, how you combined this approach and as you were in grad school, you've worked with, now you know, amazing people. You've mentioned like Dr. Susan fau, Dr.
Francis Freeman. Um. I'm curious, you know, did you start with just fluency, shaping and then incorporate stuttering modification into your, your games or what does that look like? No, we now, so we learned, um, actually we did a lot of work on prosody. So words, so it's not necessarily. Only what you say. So the fluency shaping, [00:11:00] um, but also how you say it, so a lot of the fluency shaping techniques, for example, let's work on speaking slowly then you sound very unnatural and very robotic.
And you know, the computational linguistics background that I have did a lot of work in linguistics and prody is especially how natural you sound when you speak. What are the rhythms of your, you know, what's the rhythm of your speech? The stress of your speech, the pitch of your speech. Your speech pauses.
What we've learned about stuttering, um, is that there is, you know, if there's a disruption at the level of the striatum, people tend to stutter. So, um, if you work on one second, I have, I have, um, I have to pause this for a second. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Should we have to, uh, I just wanna call right now, but yeah, we're gonna go in a few, but yeah, daddy's on a phone call right now.
Okay. All right. Thanks. He close the door behind you. All right. Thank you. That was my 4-year-old, sorry. Aw, no worries. That's that's real. She, [00:12:00] she, yeah, she, uh, she came in at, uh, at the moment. I was like, really? In my thought, no. But, uh, maybe should I, should I rephrase that a little bit? Maybe? Sure. Whatever, um, whatever feels Yeah.
Most natural to you. If you wanna start from a, a clean Yeah. Thought. Yeah, I was gonna, okay. I, I know what I was saying. So, um, so we combine, uh, so fluency shaping is not necessarily about, um, how natural you sound. It's really about trying to get the words out. So we know that if you reduce the rate of speech, you can sound more fluent, but not necessarily natural.
And a lot of people who go through this type of program, yes, they can sound more fluent, but they hate the sound of their voice because it sounds very robotic. Um, so I spent a lot of time as a computational linguist. Also working on prosody and prosody is often overlooked area. Um, things like pitch changes, amplitude [00:13:00] changes, um, the how to pause properly, um, rhythm.
A lot of these things play a major role in how natural we speak. Now, one area of research that's super hot right now. Is the area of the brain deep within the basal ganglia called the striatum. So what happens when we talk is the, yeah, if you, if you, when you say hello or I wanna say I love you, or whatever it is, um, you know, there's this motor loop that gets activated, the cortical basal ganglia, laal cortical loop or the CBGT loop.
Um, if the level, if at the, the basal ganglia, so deep within the basal ganglia, you have the striatum. And if that has a lesion, people tend to stutter. What we know about the striatum is that it's the part of the brain that's responsible for speech initiation, speech rhythm, and speech timing. And what's cool about the striatum is that it's striated, so it's [00:14:00] mixed.
Gray matter and white matter. Well, we know from neurology, gray matter are the hard parts of the brain, like the frontal lobe or the cerebellum, whereas the white matter, they're the connections, but these are the parts of the brain that can change really. Easily. So we look, we rely on fields of neuroplasticity and we say, okay, you know, with a lot of practice we can make changes in the brain, and if you target areas that are areas of the striatum, which is what we often do in our game, then you can see quite some magnificent changes in the brain through practice.
So what do we know about neuroplasticity, if you want changes to take place? So. The world of dyslexia has done this research and so has, uh, so has other, so has A DHD. Um, and what they've determined is that, you know, if you take, if you do intensive practice for about 30 minutes every day for about six weeks, you can actually create white matter changes [00:15:00] that are visible under an FM RI scan.
And that's what's really exciting about a video game. If you can create a video game that's targeting this very specific neural circuitry, you can make amazing changes for people who ha might have a certain area. And in our case, we've been focusing specifically on stuttering or fluency disorders. So all these things coming together to me just blows my mind.
All this knowledge is available, but it's, you know, you have to put it together and, and that's sort of the artwork, you know? I love it. Oof. Yeah, no, that's, that's amazing. I'm just reflecting on, as you're saying that, on how far we've come in research and, you know, thinking about the old school. Speech therapy classes, talking about where does stuttering come from?
Is it all trauma based? And you know, even talking to layman's people, I think the average person thinks stuttering is something that happens because you're, you were abused when you were younger and, you know, and maybe in rare [00:16:00] cases that could be part of it. Um, but it's not the. Un the, the main Cause you in most cases, right?
Yeah. Um, so now we have all this neuroscience and Yeah. How do you apply that though? How do you apply that? So how do you apply that in the game? I mean, you talked about this beautiful neuroscience, uh, you've got my neurons lighting up here, but, um, tell us more about like, the mechanics of some of the games that really put the rubber to the road here.
So there's a, there are several, um, one of the interesting things is, so I talked about this, the CBGT loop, right? This is a motor loop. What's really crazy is that attached to the, so part of striatum, stratum is a complicated one. I call it the stratum has several parts to it. If you look at the, the, the, the, like the south part of the, the underbelly of the ventral striatum, we call that the nucleus accumbens.
The nucleus accumbens, which is the striatum, is not part. The motor loop, it's part of the limbic system, the emotional center. So when somebody [00:17:00] feels a block or if they block and they're a person who stutters, they feel, um, they feel much more. Um, how do I, um, that's, uh, what do I say? Um, um, uh, I'm looking for, what's the word?
Yeah, I'm glad we get to cover this one.
Like the, oh, yeah. Oh, oh yeah. Here. So, um, if a, if a person, say there's a person who stutters and they have a blog, right? They will feel disproportionately bad about their speech versus somebody who does not stutter, who might have a, any type of disfluency. And one of the reasons is because they are so used to activating the nucleus accumbens.
Part of the limbic system and that part of the brain, it hates receiving negative feedback. It is like the, is the enemy of receiving, uh, you know, uh, a negative [00:18:00] feedback. There's been research on, uh, the nucleus accumbens for people who stutter that have shown that it's actually enlarged and people who stutter because it's been receiving so much more neural activity unnecessarily.
So one, one of the things that we do in the game, just from the bat, from from off the bat, uh, from the start is we, we create, uh, we offer, um, sustained, um, sustained formation exercises or we cr we give exercises, um, that will offer sustained lic segments of speech like,
and what that's doing. Is it's helping, um, when a person makes these types of sounds, they're not, they're generally not stuttering also because we are looking at the linguistic. Yeah, we're looking at the phonetics actually. Um. As I said, you know, the striatum is a timing based. Um, is is looking at the timing of speech.
Um, explosives, like [00:19:00] those are really, really fast sounds, but vowels are long, nasals are long. So when you're starting off these sounds, the chances that you are going to stutter are much, are much more reduced. Um, so we give people the opportunity to practice. Frequently, um, in a, in a much easier, uh, space.
And what we see is that, okay, they're just having fun with their voice. They're doing things like playing literally on a motorboat, on a motorboat, or they are literally crossing bridges or building bridges with their voice, whatever they're doing with their voice. Um, it's the result of them saying these extended lic segments of speech and what children will learn really quickly.
Is that their voice has more power than they think that they are in much more control of their speech than they think, but we're not teaching them early on. Prody, but they're [00:20:00] learning it through the examples that they see in the game. So we're teaching them, um, how to produce certain sounds without giving them all the technical details.
And then of course, we move on into the game. Uh, we do all kinds of other exercises. Mindfulness exercises are common not only in stuttering, but in, I mean, so many areas of speech. So we do, we have like a lot of sustain formation exercises or. Breathing exercises, for example, you have to cross this part of the, the ocean at one point and in the sailboat, and as you take a deep breath out, the sail literally expands as you breathe out.
So what we've done is we've, you know, we've, we've embedded the speech recognition engine specific to fricative sounds. And if the, if the, if the engine hears that fricative sound, then it'll trigger the, uh, the sailboat to expand. And that's a really, that's just visual deliciousness for kids as they're playing a game.
And, you know, you don't, you know, it's like this whole thing of, of Piaget, if you, [00:21:00] if you have a, a kid who's being, you know, a little bit naughty, you tell them to be quiet, they might be quiet, you know, for a few seconds. But if you tell them, if you ask them the question, how long can you be a soldier? A soldier for much longer.
And what we're trying to do is really get into this fantasy world of the child. Let them into that world. Let them play, let them really play. And as they play, they really learn the practice and then they can feel it over time. They literally feel the differences in their, in their vocal folds. Um, you know, stuttering is not, it's not a problem if, you know, it's not a, it's, there's no problem in the mouth.
It's really a neuro problem. Um, the, the mouth just. Does what the brain tells you to do. Um, and if the brain is, has a disruption, it'll only, it'll, it'll, it'll, the, the reaction will be a disruption, uh, from the oral cavity, right? But if you give the brain exercises that will [00:22:00] offer more comfort, that will, um, show that child.
Repeatedly that they're capable of doing something, they are going to be positively reinforced. And that's just the beginning. I mean, this is a game that's like 60 hours long, so you know, there's a lot of play time in there that is, oh wow, this is beautiful. Um. I just, yeah, it's, it's like a Trojan horse experience of you're like, oh, we're having fun.
Oops. You just improved your, your, your prosody and your fluency and built your confidence and your nucleus accumbens is no longer swollen with, uh, repeated, um, you know, negative reinforcements or punishments that you put on yourself or otherwise. I, I think about some students that I treated in, in high school.
I know it's different for older students and younger 'cause you can kind of have that conversation with them. But we'd work up to the goals of speaking in front of the class or, you know, she'd be very social and [00:23:00] fluent and free feeling or freely disfluent, uh, with her friends. But in certain situations, like reading in front of the class made her deathly afraid So.
This kind of thing where you're playing and whether it's a game or we had another guest, Gareth Alcom, um, who, who has a virtual reality where you can have a safe environment to practice these things. You know, exposure therapy is great to face your fears, but you don't go from zero to 60, so you have to work your way through imagination.
Yeah. One other quick thing I want to highlight there too is you made me think of. Some of these earlier, uh, innovations around stuttering, revolved around singing or Yeah, some protic changes or, um, what do you call it? Delayed auditory feedback, which can help you in the short, short term Right. As I understand.
But it doesn't really carry over to daily life, so. There's times when people sing or they act, and [00:24:00] it's getting them out of their emotional self so they can access maybe the right side of their brain, which is more prosodic and, and, and that helps them in the moment. But this is what you're talking about is using play and prosody, but it's carrying over, um, in daily life.
So I, I'm still figuring out the difference. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and interestingly, you bring up the delayed auditory feedback. I mean, if you've ever, uh, used those devices, um, whether you have a coral effect, um, you know, or the cocktail dinner party in the background. What it forces people to do is speak slower and all the slow, all, you know, slowing down.
It helps with the timing. So you're setting up the striatum for better timing, but then that slowed speech is not natural. So there's other ways that you can go around it. And um, the other thing about wearing a delayed auditory feedback device is that. It's really taxing on the cognitive system. I mean, you know, if you want to have a superficial discussion, that's fine, [00:25:00] but once you wanna, if you wanna get to, um, a, a much deeper discussion, it's much more taxing on people's, uh, thought process, uh, processes altogether.
I. And that's sort of the feedback that I've had from so many people who have used, uh, uh, you know, a delayed auditory feedback device. So yeah, it always has its pros and, and and cons. But, um, you know, for us, the biggest thing is we want people to stay motivated to practice. We want people to feel. Like, they're literally playing a game and that's what we're doing.
Um, and then they don't feel bad if they make a mistake. And the other thing is, um, you know, we built our own, something I haven't talked about, but the whole game is used as ai. It's, it's all on device AI that we've built. I. So that when you play a game, it just automatically provides feedback. Um, you know, if you've done great, awesome.
It encourages you. If you've done something uh, wrong, I don't wanna say wrong, but if you've made a mistake, it tells you that you've made a mistake and it tells you, uh, you know, what you can do to improve. You know, it gives you [00:26:00] some suggestions and the game then adapts to the level of difficulty to that.
That one individual. Um, so I think, um, you know, that whole thing makes you realize that the, if the game can be adaptive to the level of the user, then they are going to stay more motivated to play longer. And the people who do play the game, you know. You, you have people who were beta testers a year ago, and they, they still play every day.
Um mm-hmm. And it's, it's great to get the positive feedback. I love that, you know, people who, um, you know, who see past the bugs, of course there's bugs in, in our software because, you know, it, it's hard to get everything right. Um, but, you know, most of the time, uh, when things go well, it goes great. And I, I, I'm, I'm very, it, it, it's just very, very motivating, um, you know, to stay focused and to stay on this path.
And it's true. I mean, you know, we are really big on neuroplasticity. We are really big on keeping people [00:27:00] motivated to practice and that's how they see changes. But, you know, you can't, you can't run a marathon if all you ever do is sprint. You know, you can't finish it properly, I should say. Mm. Yeah. Yeah.
It has to be sustainable. Well, I want to shift gears, uh, uh, really quickly. I know you gotta get to dinner. You're in Belgium. Thank you for taking this time. It's late there. But, um, you know, we have some listeners who are aspiring entrepreneurs. We have me and others who are very interested in AI as such a buzz, uh, term for good reason.
But I'm curious. Wearing both your scientist and therapist hats, how do you see AI changing speech therapy in the coming years or reflecting back, you know, has it really changed a lot in terms of capabilities in speech technology in the, as much as we feel it with generative AI and chat GPT in these things, or.
I mean, this is all, these are all subparts of ai, and I feel like, what, what will change? Um, at least this is [00:28:00] my hope. Um, people have asked, you know, are you going to replace SLPs? Um, you know, that's, that's never been, uh, a question to make a whole profession obsolete. One of the things that, that always, you know, that, that often, uh, stuck with me was the role of an SLP.
Um, I find. Working with nurses and SLPs are like the kindest people in the world. And, um, you know, when you, when you start the, your, your client session, a lot of it is the social emotional check in. And if you only see a kid for 30 minutes a week and every minute counts. I think it would be amazing if you could spend more time on the social emotional check-in with that child because they need that support and less enough and, you know, you don't have to have the pressure to focus in on all of those motor skills that you want them to practice.
Let the game or let a tool do that for you. [00:29:00] So what I would love to see, um, is a healthier world of speech, language pathology. Um, so many countries. Don't even have speech language pathologists. They're just people who have a speech disorder and families help them treat it. People who really don't know anything about a, a, a given disorder in a lot of countries, there's just huge wait lists, right?
So the United States is a country where most of the time you can see a, a speech language pathologist. Um, if you wanna see a specialist, uh, it might be a little bit longer. Typically you see them for 30 minutes. And if you wanna make progress, that's, that's just hard. It's hard to make progress if you see somebody for 30 minutes a day, a a week.
And again, those 30 minutes truly are probably like 15 minutes of real therapy. Mm-hmm. I would love to see, uh, you know, I would like, for me, what I would like to see is that a therapist just doesn't feel the pressure of. [00:30:00] Having to get those 50 targets in for the session. What our game does is it actually, it automatically keeps track of people's data.
So if you said 50 words for that day, it'll keep track of it, it'll, it'll keep track of it the next day. The next day, like every time you play, it keeps track of everything that you say, and we automatically generate soap notes. And in those soap notes, it's generated using natural language processing and very easy to read language.
And then it shows a list of all the words that have been produced, whether correct or not correct. And if there are not correct, we see, we show why. So what it does is it gives guidance for the next session, say a week later on what types of progress or what types of challenges that kid had so that they can continue to work on more.
Focus therapy and it'll give the SLP much greater insight as to where that kid [00:31:00] stands throughout the week or where they have been throughout the week. There's a lot of accountability all of a sudden because we keep track of that data so we can tell the truth. Finally, and I, I love that we can, you know, as we're shifting into the AI space, you know, whether it's my tool or somebody else's tool, we need better ways to track.
And measure, uh, objective data. Uh, we need better ways to follow true progress. This subjectivity should is something from the past. And I think that the tools that are available nowadays should be, should be there to empower the scientific approach, uh, to to, to the, to the truth of how people are progressing.
And that's really what I want for this space. I really want it to advance. Medicine took that step about 50, 60 years ago. Speech and language pathology is way behind and we need to catch up and we can Hmm. Yeah. Uh, 'cause in my sessions I'd be too focused on objective data [00:32:00] taking that you'd lose the human interaction in the moment.
'cause I gotta get that, that number and this will, technology will automate that part so we can focus on doing what we do best. Um, yeah. Yeah. That's the same in psychiatry. It's it we're entering a really interesting period of, uh, data collection with AI and, and. Making it fun at the same time. So Eric, yeah, thank you so much for sharing this wisdom.
So many thoughts I could follow up on, but I'm gonna let you get to dinner. Um, thank you. What, where can people find you and where should people go to learn more about your fascinating work, say at Labs? Yeah, so they can go to our website, say@labs.com. Um, they can email me eric@sayatlabs.com. That's Eric with an h.
And, you know, I love, uh, I love fielding questions from people. I give a lot of talks nowadays, and it's just a pleasure to, you know, to see so many people coming out of the woods, having so many questions, so much interest in [00:33:00] this multidisciplinary world of speech, language pathology and speech therapy or, and speech technology or ai.
And, uh, I'm just so thrilled to be a part of it. And anybody who has questions, don't be shy. Please get in touch. I'd love to connect. Beautiful. Eric, thank you so much. Thanks so much, James. All right, stop the recording. Awesome. Thank you. Um, that was great. Wonderful. You're great, great speaker. So many ideas going off in my head.
Um, thank you. And it's funny, um, yeah, sorry that my daughter came in kind of. Do we? No, no. I mean, don't apologize. That's fine. Yeah. No, but you know, and it's funny, um, I, I feel like I probably should have been a little bit less lengthy in some of my responses because it's, it might be boring, but, um, but yeah.
No, I think, I mean we, yeah, I, I, I could've guided us towards the [00:34:00] AI business part sooner, but I think it's, I think I like going deep on that topic. I mean, I was just like, that's very interesting and curious and things I didn't even think about asking. So I'm glad that you went into those rabbit holes. Um, yeah, and it's interesting.
I know Gareth, he's actually also in Belgium. He's a he British I was gonna say. Yeah. And he's really big on desensitization, but not really. Um, and so he, his whole thing is that if people want to practice in a certain space, great. Um, and I think that's awesome that, um, you know, he's also coming at it with a different angle.
Um, so, you know, kudos to the guy. He is. He is a nice guy. He's a nice guy. Yeah, we need all, we need everyone, um, doing different things. And um, when you talk about neuroplasticity too, that there's a whole, when I'm thinking about Oz mind in our work with like psychedelic assisted therapies, I don't think, there's not that much, there's barely any research, but there's some to suggest that, um.
I [00:35:00] think the meta thing with psychedelics is with certain people could help with neuroplasticity, laying down this fresh white, uh, white matter connections and dendritic connections and give you a new space to form connections. So, uh, Paul Stats, I don't know if you know who that is, but he was on Joe Rogan like way back in the day talking about how he took a hero dose of magic mushrooms and cured his stuttering, which you know, is a.
One of one story, so that, I dunno what the science would be there, but it's interesting though, you know, there's, I know, uh, Gerald McGuire, um, just, uh, and he's, he's a psychiatrist, uh, to uc or uc. Irvine or Riverside? Uc. Riverside. He's a person who stutters, um, and he's the first, and I think he's the main person in the world focusing on.
Um, medication or pharmacological solutions for people who stutter. And I've met some of the, I've met some of his patients. That's how I know of him. And I've actually, we, we are, we're connected, him and I. Um, but [00:36:00] um, you know, there's no, there's no magic pill yet, but he's been working on it for some 20 years.
Um, you know, people are coming up with all kinds of, um, innovative ways, and I just think it's great. You know, uh, it's, it's scary to be an entrepreneur in any new space because you have no idea how your audience is going to react. Um, but um, yeah, I'll, I'll say, I'll say it's the most fun time I've ever had in my life.
'cause it's, it's all, you know, it's, it's, you wake up and it's just, you know, you're, you're the wall. So you better, you better push hard. Sustainably not sprinting all the time. Yeah. Yeah. You said that. True, true, true. I did. You're right. Well, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I hope and, and I hope, I hope what I said came off.
Um, all right. Most of the time, you know, it's, uh, yeah, yeah. But the neuroplasticity stuff is fascinating and I get to, you know, we're doing some, some awesome research right now and, um, you [00:37:00] know, the, we're just so privileged. We get to, to work in this space with amazing researchers and. Be able to provide our technology to, you know, to do other research.
Um, you know, we're, we're just a little bit branched out and the company's growing and, you know, we're doing other things beyond stuttering. We're working on Parkinson's, we're working on articulation. Um, you know, we're working on stuff for voice, like we're doing some pretty cool stuff. And, uh, there's just, there's just like a lot to do.
So it's pretty cool that fun and exciting and stressful, but all in the best ways, hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Well, that's why I live in Europe, to try to, to recognize that it's okay to have a glass of wine and not feel bad for it, you know? Exactly, exactly. They're like, why are you working so much?
You're like, I, I can't give up my roots. Yeah. I imported them. Well, you got me fired up too. I, I don't know how to code, but I'm, even with some of these no code platforms and generative ai, I still feel like there's something. [00:38:00] Uh, I could do to automate a certain phonology. Things that I learned in grad school that haven't, that are just living on dusty websites, where you have to manually download them and then, you know, everything's very manual.
PT can, can chat. GPT is is a good coder, so you can use that as a, as a tool. Have you used, uh, Claude, the new one's like Cool. 'cause it has a live coding environment with art artifacts where you can see iterations on the code live without copy and pasting it. I like that too. No way. No, I, I, what's it called?
Claude? Yeah, it's from Anthropic. So if you just, it's CLAU d.ai. Um, the new version 3.5 sauna is pretty. Amazing. And it sounds, if you ever wanna use it for marketing, like copywriting materials, um, I never suggest just copy and pasting, but like it's a lot more human sounding than chat. G-P-T-D-L-A-U-D-E.
Like Claude. Claude. Yeah. Claude Claude. [00:39:00] He's French maybe. I don't know. Claude is, that's cool. clo.com ai. Yeah. It's funny because we, I mean, we're all programmers on the team, so you know, everybody, we all do our own thing. It's, it is funny though, sometimes we've actually used, uh, chat GPT to find a couple of bugs and it's, it's helped.
So we don't do it often, but it's happened. Never, you know, a few times. Yeah. Can save you time. Why not? Like you don't. Yeah, totally. Be smart. Yeah. Work smart. Awesome, Eric. Well, yeah. Appreciate you. Um, I, I'll follow up with email too. Uh, I think we wanna release this episode in for start ring awareness month, which I believe is October.
Um, I think October 22nd. I think, uh, is is the day, so the 21st, the round that week. Whenever that's be, that'd be great. You know? Yeah. Um, yeah. So thank you. Thank you for taking the time and for your interest. I really appreciate [00:40:00] it. Well, thank you. Likewise. Of course. This is, this has been a great conversation and, uh, I hope let's keep in touch.
I'll follow up with, uh, uh, on email. Yeah, man. Come to Belgium. Take, take those two months. Come to Belgium. I'll take you around. Uh, you'll, you'll want, you won't wanna leave. I came from California to Belgium. I know how, I know the, how crazy that is, you know, so That's true. You know that you have the perspective.
Okay. I'll tell my, my boss that I have to do it for, for personal work purposes as well. Yeah. Besides my full-time job. That's it. Don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah. It's fine. It's fine. Um, I didn't go to Asher 'cause they're not paying for it, but, um, maybe next year we'll see. Um, what's in, it's on the west coast this year, right?
It's going, it's in Seattle. It's in Seattle, yeah. I, yeah, I would be cool to go. I just, my, I, when I was working full-time as an SLP, my job would pay for it. They would full, you know. Um, I wouldn't have to take off work really, but now I'm working in a different capacity, uh, marketing for mental health. So [00:41:00] I could do it, but I would have to be very motivated and I don't, I'm not, I understand, I understand.
I gotta go, I'm gonna be in trouble. Okay. Alright. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you. Have a good night. Yeah, man. Same. Likewise. Okay, take care. Bye. Later. Yeah.

Erich Reiter
CEO of SAY IT Labs
Erich holds a M.Sc. in Speech and Communication Disorders from the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions, and an M.Sc.in Computational Linguistics from the University of Buffalo. Erich started his career in 2004 working as a speech recognition engineer in the Silicon Valley for Nuance Communications, the original makers of SIRI. In 2012 after losing a friend to ALS, a new interest in technology for people with speech disorders emerged. Erich left Nuance in 2014 to pursue a career as a speech and language pathologist.
In 2019, Erich co-founded Say It Labs where he now combines his knowledge of artificial intelligence, speech recognition, and speech and language pathology to create speech-controlled video games for people with speech disorders.
Since the inception of Say It Labs, Erich has been a keynote speaker at the European Stuttering Specialization (formerly ECSF), and a speaker at the Oxford Dysfluency conference, the World Congress on Stuttering and Cluttering, and the National A.I. Institute for Exceptional Education.