Well this year has been strange as far as weather down here in Louisiana. We've had some severe weather during the spring, during the summer, during the fall, and it's getting kind of crazy here in the winter, too. I don't know. It's like the world is coming to an end, right? All this climate change or whatever. It's for real, I guess. But anyway, today I wanted to talk to you guys about evolving as a Linux user. Because sometimes people ask me how I ended up on things like Arch Linux, or Vim, or Emacs, or how did I get into the terminal and things like that. And now one of the things with Linux, there's typically two types of users. There's those that they just want to install something quick and easy and use it as is. They never want to look under the hood and figure out how it works. And then there's the other group of Linux users that is the Tinkers. They do want to know how everything works. They want to take things apart and put it back together again.  And that's why so many of us gravitate toward, I guess, not user-friendly distributions like Arch Linux and the hundreds of distros based on Arch Linux or Gen2 and the various distributions based on Gen2 and things like that Slackware. And, you know, that's okay if you're not there yet. I think a lot of people, when they first come to Linux, they install Ubuntu or Linux Mint. And then, you know, they, I guess, feel intimidated by those that have gotten past the point of needing to use something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint. And it's not, it's really not about elitism or arrogance or anything like that. Many of us use Arch Linux. It's because for what we do, using Arch or an Arch based Linux distribution is much, much easier for us than using something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint or Open Sousa. Why is that? Well, when you're new, you're not going to be doing a lot of crazy things, right? Like compiling your own software, doing extreme customizations of your desktop or window manager and things like that. Typically, you just want something that's really easy and quick to install and looks good out of the box.  And that's okay.  And it becomes very limiting when you use something like Ubuntu or Mint, you know, as opposed to something like Arch Linux, because let's take Ubuntu, for example. Ubuntu comes with its own very customized GNOME desktop environment. And if you want to hack on it a little bit and change things, it's tough. Ubuntu makes it really tough. Also, their desktop and the suite of applications, everything is really tightly integrated together. And sometimes you can't separate those pieces, because like the Ubuntu desktop is really almost like a meta package, a collection of things. And sometimes it's really hard to separate some of the stuff you don't want on the system from the stuff you do, because just the way these user friendly distributions are built. They package things in such a way. It's really, again, it's designed for the brand new user. But for those of us that want to do more than just the real basics, Ubuntu is hard. It's frustrating to use. I mean, I save so much time using Arch-based distributions compared to Ubuntu. Because unlike Ubuntu and Mint and Sousa, Arch Linux has no, they don't have a dog in the fight as far as what they do with their desktop environments.  It's not going to be themed or customized in any way unless you do it. And a lot of new users think, well, that's crazy. I've got to put in all this work once I install this window manager desktop environment. Yeah, but you know, that's, that's what some of us signed up for. Plus, you only really have to do it one time.  And you always have your own configs after that. It's always your desktop environment, if you will, that you always reinstall. There's no reason to go to something like Ubuntu and have to fight Ubuntu trying to take things apart and put it back together the way you want. And that's one of the real things about Arch Linux. That's why the Arch Philosophy, they talk about Arch Linux being simple, right? Arch Linux, the Arch Philosophy is all about simplicity. And a lot of people think, well, that's Arch is not simple because it's not user friendly. Well, simple doesn't mean user friendly. Simple means everything is simple by design, right? All the pieces have been separated, you know, until they're smallest components, basically, and you pick and choose the parts you want. And you build that thing the way you want to make it look. I think another reason that Arch Linux is great is because it's rolling release, right? Rolling release has really caught on. When I started in Linux, you know, 12, 13 years ago, as far as desktop use, rolling releases were seen as kind of a niche. Nobody took them seriously. Nobody thought they were quote stable. You didn't see people running them on a server ever like that was unheard of. And really, people are starting to come around to the idea of rolling releases being the better model as opposed to static release distributions. I think Arch Linux has really changed the game there. I think, I think there's a reason why you're seeing Ubuntu. Ubuntu's popularity is starting to seriously decline. People don't talk about it as much. I don't talk about it that often. Really, unless Ubuntu has a big release, I don't talk about it much on the YouTube channel. Why? There's really not much to say about it. That's not, that's not where all the innovation is happening these days. That's not where the action is. The action is really these days, Arch, right? Arch dominates the desktop Linux world, all the Arch based distributions. Manjaro is exploding in popularity. Arco Linux is exploding in popularity. Mainstream Arch, even though it's a command line, incidental, you know, is exploding in popularity. There is a ton of people giving Arch Linux a serious try that otherwise wouldn't have, say, five and definitely ten years ago. Some of the other benefits of Arch Linux, you know, why it has gained ground over things like Ubuntu and Debian and Mint is their pragmatic stance as far as the repository of software. You know, Arch Linux does not mind putting proprietary software in its repositories. They are not free software only purists. Now, I'm a free software zealot, but even I as a free software zealot don't mind them having proprietary software available for their users in their repositories. What I hate is Linux distributions that install proprietary software out of the box on those distributions, you know, and basically they're trying to force proprietary software on their users. I don't like that, but I don't mind proprietary software being in the repos available for those that need it and want to use it because not everybody cares about the free software movement. I get that. So I actually like the pragmatic stance that Arch Linux takes in that regard. And again, I think that helps with Arch Linux becoming so popular is the fact that there's so much software available on Arch Linux that is tougher to get, you know, even on things like Ubuntu. There's there's stuff that I install that, you know, I have no problems installing on Arch Linux because I know I can find it in the Arch repositories or in the AUR, the Arch user repository, or with Arch Linux, you also have flat packs, snaps, app images available if you want to use them. And that's the other thing. They're not forced on you either with Ubuntu snap is pre installed, you're expected to use snaps with Linux Mint. They have flat pack installed and you're expected to use flat packs. Well, with Arch Linux, nothing is installed. If you want to use snaps, install it and set it up, you're free to do so. Same thing with flat pack. If you want to use flat pack, install it, use it, you're free to do so. But they don't care if you use it. They don't care if you don't use it. And I think that's the better model. I think again, I think we're starting to see this real shift in desktop Linux where really what used to be in a Ubuntu dominated game is really now dominated by Arch Linux. And I love it. I love it because Arch Linux, of course, is a community distribution too. It's not corporate backed. There's no company really calling the shots. It's all about us, the community, building something great. And I think it's a model that works. Anyway, that's enough of me rambling and walking around here in the snow. I don't even know what in the hell I was going to talk about when I turned on the camera. I just started walking around and talking. I hope some of this incoherent mess that I said makes sense at least when I put it on YouTube. If it doesn't, I do apologize, but you got to understand.  Alright guys, peace.


Let's welcome the Senior Technical Evangelist of Amazon, Hermann Viscousso. Hermann, are you there? Yes, yes, I'm here. Welcome Hermann. I'm fine, how are you? Doing great, thank you. Fantastic. Thank you for the great introduction. Take it away, Hermann. It's all yours. All right. Thank you. So, let me start my presentation. All right. So, my name is Hermann Viscousso and I'm a Senior Technical Evangelist in the Alexa team. I do a lot of technical work related to Alexa every day. And that allows me to be in close contact with the latest features and everything we're doing to make Alexa smarter. There are a lot of things that I want to cover today and very little time, so it's very difficult to cover then only half an hour. But I wish that I can give you at least a glimpse of the latest progress that we are making with Alexa. Okay. So, if you want to continue the conversation with me later, maybe you can reach me via Twitter. That's why I added to Twitter there. So, let's get down to it. So, when the first pitch for the Echo device started circulating in Amazon, and that was before, a few years before 2014, the first reaction was, this is going to be very hard, as it would require a lot of inventions, right? There were a lot of things that were not... Sorry to interrupt you, but we're not seeing your screen. Are you sharing the screen with us? One sec. Oh, sorry. Just give me one sec. Right. There you go. Do you have to choose full screen? Can you see it now? You can see it. Okay, perfect. So, as I said, you can reach me via Twitter if you want to continue the conversation. We missed one slide, which is this slide here. This is the original launch of the Echo device in 2014. And before that, a few years before, we were thinking that we had to invent a lot of things to get this technology out, you know? So, a few very important things had to happen before we could get here to this point in 2014 when we launched the original Echo device. So, first, it was the rise of machine learning applied to voice processing that needed to be more mature. And that specifically advances in deep learning applied to voice. And that only happened to give you an idea like about 10 years ago, okay? As you will see during this talk, it will strip all machine learning-based processes from Alexa that technology will not be viable today, okay? All right. So, on top of that, the incredible compute power needed to process billions and billions of voice requests had to be tackled by mature and scalable cloud computing services. The offering became more mature at about the same time, say, 2010 or around 2010. And to put it in context, we launched AWS to the public in 2006. And Alexa runs on AWS services. Today, as long as you can pay for the services, you can tap into as much computing power as you really need with great scalability options. So, we were at the right time then. The third trigger of this evolution was the natural evolution of user interfaces. We seem to have like an interface, like a paradigm shift in interfaces about every 10 years or so. And we went from input devices, classic like keyboards, et cetera, to mouse, to touch screens, et cetera. And we really voice is the next interface milestone, okay? But voice is special. It's not just another interface. It's special because the interesting aspect of voice is that our brains are already wired to learn languages from birth, you know? Voice is natural to us. It is the first thing that we hear when we were born, like our mother's voice, right? And it is the first interface that we don't need to learn afterwards. As long as we know how to talk, we don't need to learn something specific to start interacting with technology, okay? So we brought machine learning, cloud computing capabilities at that time, and this natural evolution of user interfaces together to create Alexa. And we welcome voice because we are wired for speech already. And that's why we have seen such a meteoric rise of Alexa since 2014. So here's some historic context. I don't want to stop for a long time here, but the evolution of user interfaces is a very simplified way. The point here is that we have a paradigm shift about every decade or so that allows us to experience a new magic moment, you know? Today's magic moment has to do with voice user interfaces. So why is this all happening now, you know? Voice recognition has been around for some time now, but ASR, which is automatic speech recognition, which is technology that processes voice and reverses into text, has been around for some time, but has only seen marginal returns every decade since the 70s. These were all improvements over the same classical algorithms or switching to different classical algorithms, as you can see in the graphic here. But after 2010, there is a spike, as you can see there, in the ability for machines to translate speech to text. If you take a look at the scientific papers around the time, you can attribute this to new machine learning techniques being applied to voice signal processing. In just a few years, we make more progress than the previous 30 or 40 years of research. And this puts the technology very close to human accuracy levels, when transcribing speech, and it is now... Right now, it is the point, the single point in the all of AI history where we achieve this milestone. So it's a very special moment for all of us, I would say. So here you can see some of the latest announcements, the latest echo devices. They are like a spheric right now, and they include several improvements, but it seems that we announce new devices like every September. When we announced the second generation echo show, it was September 20, 2018, then we announced a whole lot of, like 14 products and services last year, also in September, including the Echo Studio, and now this September, we announced the new echo. The new echo device, besides announcing a lot of ring-related devices, as with the Echo Studio, the new echo device is adaptive, and it automatically senses the space to fine-tune the audio playback. So that's really something, you know, it's really, really awesome. But we also introduced the Echo Show, which is our device with the rotational screen that you can see right there in the back of those devices. But these devices are special, not only because of the improved audio, the design and the features, but also because they equip a new chip that opens up the door to new possibilities, and that's part of my talk today. The new echo is powered by Amazon's first generation AZ1 neural edge processor, which is a model that's purpose-built for accelerating machine learning applications. With the chip, we can run powerful inference engines quickly on the edge. So these inference engines are running on the device sensitive to this chip. And we started with an old neural speech recognition model that makes the request faster. Basically, the recognition happens much faster as it's happening on the device, and makes Alexa more responsive. I'm going to comment on this on the next slides. So if you take a look at this graphic here, you'll see that this is what we introduced in 2014. We invented to be great at ASR, which is automatic speech recognition that I already mentioned, NLU, which is natural language understanding and text-to-speech. So this is more or less how Alexa works, the building blocks of Alexa. You get an utterance or a phrase from the user, then you process it in this first step, which is ASR, converts the audio into text. Then when you have the text, you need to decide what the text means, and that's NLU, tries to assign a meaning to what the user is saying. And then you have another phase which involves converting the response from Alexa, like for example, if you create a skill, you can send a response back to the user, back to voice, right? And that's called TTS, text-to-speech. And those are the basic areas that are really good in the voice assistant for it to have a high quality. Okay? Our vision is really to make interacting with Alexa as simple as speaking to another person. So this is just basics, and it's a little bit like transactional if you think about it, right? Now I will share with you a few AI advancements which are bringing us closer to that vision of making this more conversational. Okay? And then I will talk about self-learning or the ability that allows Alexa to learn without supervision, okay? So when we misunderstand someone, for example, we are able to quickly course correct by picking nuances in how the person responds or by asking clarifying questions. Like us, Alexa is now using similar self-learning to automatically correct her mistakes by learning from customer feedback signals. These signals include vocal frustration such as Alexa, someone saying Alexa that's wrong, for example, or direct interruptions such as Alexa stop after some frustration with a specific interaction. Once Alexa determines that the particular action was not satisfactory, she automatically caress herself without any human involvement. And one example would be like multiple interactions where the user sent a correction right afterwards. So let me show you an example to make this more clear, okay? Suppose that we want to play a song and we don't remember the name of the song. We say, Alexa play a little short song. That's not a real song, actually. It's not in the catalogue. So Alexa would not be able to play it, okay? But what if several users, let's say enough users correct themselves right afterwards, they remember the song and say, oh, what I really meant is play baby short song. And they basically say that to Alexa right afterwards they made this mistake. Alexa has a system that can actually learn from those mistakes. There's automatic error detection, like these type of errors. There's a reformulation of the query. Basically Alexa rewrites the query correctly because Alexa knows that you meant play baby short, right? And it's paying attention to implicit and explicit feedback to do that sort of correction. So afterwards when the user is actually asking for, hey, play little short song, Alexa would directly play baby short and making an interpretation that is what you really wanted without failing in the interaction, right? So that's one example that we call automatic equivalence class learning, okay? Now we are now talking about self-learning and a step forward by enabling customers, that enables customers to directly teach Alexa, right? But we have an experience right now, which just announces in September, where we want you to be able to directly and interactively teach Alexa something, right? So what I'm going to show you now, we call this Teachable AI and it's, we have our BP and head scientist at Amazon Alexa, which will be showing how to actually teach Alexa something very specific. Let me show you the video right now, okay? Alexa, set the thermostat to Rohit's vacation mode. What do you mean by Rohit's vacation mode? 60 degrees. The heat set to 60. I will remember Rohit's vacation mode means 60 degrees. Alexa, set the light to Rohit's reading mode. What do you mean by Rohit's reading mode? 40% brightness. Okay, I'll remember that Rohit's reading mode means 40% brightness. Now, just to show that she has actually learned what reading mode is, let me first turn the lights off. Alexa, turn off the light. Okay. Alexa, set the light to Rohit's reading mode. Okay. So this is a specific interaction where Alexa is learning something in a custom way, just for you, just Rohit's learning reading mode, et cetera. So you can teach Alexa specific things that are applicable to you. And we hope that we can enable this feature starting next year. The other area that helps us get closer to conversations is context awareness, right? And it's really awful when you're talking to someone that doesn't remember what we just said, right? And that's something that tends to happen sometimes with voice assistants today. So we are working really hard on that area too. So let me show you one example here. Suppose that you say, Alexa, what's the weather like in Madrid, right? That's easy. Any voice assistant can actually solve that. And you probably get the right weather in Madrid. But what if the user says, like immediately afterwards, what about tomorrow, right? If you think about the phrase, what about tomorrow? For a human, that's super easy. We know what we're talking about. We have context, et cetera. We're talking about Madrid. If a voice assistant, if it's not properly handling context, what about tomorrow doesn't have enough information? It's basically referring to tomorrow, but it's not referring to the weather, to the city, et cetera. So we added a new layer for contextual interpretation that is basically using machine learning to carry over the context of the conversation, like for example, that we're talking about the weather, that we're talking about Madrid, et cetera, to make the rest of the interactions more meaningful and more right to the point, okay? So we have this system up and running in several interactions, and I hope that you can try it out later. All right. So another area of innovation, and I'm sorry that I'm going quickly because I have a lot of ground to cover in just under 20 minutes now. So another area of innovation is understanding the state of the user, right? So being context aware by understanding the state or persona of the user, that's what I mean. And we keep innovating in that area for specific interactions. So Alexa can detect, for example, if an interaction was frustrating for the user and try to remediate that. That's something that we are starting to support now. Let's see an example of how context is interpreted based on factors like how the customer is actually talking. Let me show you the video. Rough day. What's for dinner? Who knows? Would you like to place an order or track an order? So Alexa Whisper, we call this Alexa Whisper, detects when the user is whispering and whispers back the response. Here we are using machine learning on both sides of the equation to detect the whisper and to generate the whispered voice of Alexa. Okay. So let's talk about understanding context without words. Okay. Some time ago we announced Alexa Guard. You probably heard of it. It's an exciting technology that allows us to extend a wayward detection beyond words. Alexa Guard right now detects glass breaking in your home, for example, also CO2 allowing detectors. And it's using the same technology that we use for wayward detection, which is when you say Alexa, for example, when you say Echo. It's the same technology, but in this case the neural networks are trained specifically to detect the specific sound patterns. Okay. So we are now extending this technology to other sounds. For example, baby crying, that's one that is coming. And this all happens on the device. Okay. So this pattern detection in this specific type of sounds are happening on the device, not on the cloud. And we hope that the new ACID1 chip that I mentioned before is going to help to boost this functionality. What happens when a sound is detected? You will probably, you get a specific alert in your phone. Like for example, hey, there's a glass breaking at home. There's an alarm sign in the home. Okay. Via the Alexa app. So since it's critical to detect an alarm, for example, CO2 alarm, it needs to run on the device. Because if you add all the overhead of the cloud processing, et cetera, that wouldn't be super quick. And the alarm is something critical that you want to detect right away. But a well-trained neural network won't fit on the device. When you properly train a network to detect several types of glass breaking, like with all the variation, et cetera, you end up with a very big neural network. So you kind of really feel it on the device. So we are using something called knowledge distillation. Knowledge distillation is using a smaller model based on the big model that is trained on the big model. And it's using a student-teacher model. So you can think of these small neural networks running on the device as kids that were taught by a bigger neural network to actually detect those type of sounds. As you can see here, we have a specific type of neural network called LSTM, long, short-term neural networks, or memory networks. And these are specifically useful for detecting sequences, sequences in time. That's what you will see LSTM all over. So it's long, short-term memory to be more accurate. Okay. We are also innovating, making Alexa more natural across several areas. Most people correlate this to Alexa sounding more natural, but again, it's only part of the equation. There are a lot of things where you can be more natural, especially in the interactions. I will give you one example here, which is this. Usually people can't remember invocation names. Invocation names is how you call a specific skill within Alexa. For example, if you want to get an Uber, for example, you will say, Alexa, open Uber and get me a car, for example. But people have to remember the name of the skills and the evocation names of the skills. So discoverability is a challenge. Okay. And we are making skills, we are trying to make skills more natural to discover. So if you take a look at this example, where the user is saying, Alexa, get me a car, that could be interpreted in many ways, right? You might want an Uber, as I mentioned before. You might want to buy a car. You might want like a toy car for your kid. There are many ways in which you can interpret that. So Alexa has to understand what you really need. In order to do that, Alexa is using this method that is also used in machine learning to actually create a contextual ranking of possibilities of what you really meant and go with the best option. That way, when the user says, get me a car and the context is right, Alexa will directly call the Uber skill and get you that car at home. Right? Obviously the right contextual signals have to be there. But the point is that you are speaking more naturally if you just say, Alexa, I want a car. Alexa, get me a car rather than remembering which skill you have to open, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so let's move to the next one. Alexa now also sounds more natural. To give you an example, I'm going to play a sound of how Alexa used to talk back in 2014 when we launched the device using the Echo device, using concatenative text-to-speech technology, which is a technology that just puts together small pieces of audio to actually create the audio like a puzzle. So this is how it sounded in 2014. Let's hear it. Star Trek is an American media franchise based on the science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry. We are now using a different technology that we call Neuro TTS. And we are using neural networks to model and generate Alexa's voice from scratch. We are not using concatenation of small pieces of sounds anymore. So this is what Neuro TTS, coming from Alexa in English, sounds in 2020. Let's hear it. Star Trek is an American media franchise based on the science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry. Okay, as you can see, sounds much more natural. For those of you that were paying attention when Alexa said Roddenberry in 2014, there was an artifact there, and now it's not present anymore. This technology in Neuro TTS is revolutionary, and let me explain why. Why this is making a big, big impact. When you use deep neural networks to power Alexa's voice, you can model specific speakers. For example, if we consider AWS, there's a service called Poly. And 27 neural TTS voices sound just like this in terms of how natural they sound. And depending on the context of your request, Alexa can adapt to a specific, or learn a specific speaking style. And this is something that I wanted to show you, which I found really interesting. For example, what if we train these voices based on someone that is speaking on TV, saying the news, for example, reading the news. The news casters have very specific kind of styles of speaking. So let me show you, we did that. We trained a type of voice that we call news caster style. And let me show you how it sounds, which is quite interesting. Let's hear it. San Francisco's $2.2 billion grand central terminal open. Spanning three city blocks, San Francisco's $2 billion transit terminal is open. This is after nearly a decade under construction. Coined the grand central of the West, the new Salesforce Transit Center is located near the heart of downtown. It is expected to accommodate 100,000 passengers each weekday. That's up to 45 million people a year. It welcomed its first passengers and visitors this month. As you can see, it's using all the different details of sound talking, saying the news, right? So thanks to this technology, AWS is now offering a service called Brand Voice. Brand Voice is a service where you can work with AWS as a company or as a brand to actually come up with the voice of your brand that is completely artificial. You know, it's trained using neural TTS and that you can use as an API by passing text and that text will be converted into natural sounding voice. And one example is KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken. Kentucky Fried Chicken worked with a brand voice and created Colonel Sanders, the typical Southern accent voice, and this is how it sounds. I just wanted to show it to you. Hi, I'm Colonel Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Let me tell you a joke. What do you call a chicken crossing the road? Pull tree in motion. Got it? Pull tree in motion. Food for laughter. This is quite interesting because this is a plain text that is passed to the vocoders. It's actually SSML and this is 100% artificially generated speech and it sounds very natural and you can use it whatever you want. You can pass any text to it, so Colonel Sanders would be saying whatever. Obviously KFC can do that, but as a brand, you know, you can tap into this technology today. So let's continue with voice generation, which is one of my favorite topics. As Alexa continues to become more natural to interact with, we wanted it to go a step further. We wanted to take it to the next level. When we speak to another person, we get both verbal and nonverbal cues and adapt our responses accordingly, right? So later this year, Alexa will adapt her responses based on the context of the conversation by adjusting the tone of the voice, stressing certain words, adding poses, and even breaths. So it will sound much more natural than what you heard so far. Let's hear a short sentence without, we call this speaking adaptation or speaker adaptation. Let's hear a brief sound that doesn't have speaker adaptation and then compare it to how it sounds with speaker adaptation. Here goes the one that doesn't have speaker adaptation. Very happy to help. Let's find something you like on Amazon Music. How about something from the 80s, living on a prayer by Bon Jovi? Does that work? So this is the same audio with speaker speaking adaptation. Very happy to help. Let's find something you like on Amazon Music. How about something from the 80s, living on a prayer by Bon Jovi? Does that work? It sounds much more natural when you look at the final question. For example, it sounds really, really natural. So if you can model a speaking style, why not try tomorrow a celebrity voice? That's exactly what we did last year with Samuel Jackson with his permission, obviously. But we not only recorded audio snippets of Samuel's voice and his laughs, for example, but we also generated a vocoder. A vocoder is the engine that allows you to pass text and output voice, right? Obviously using neural networks and trace with deep neural networks. So we trained this vocoder, and this is similar to what you just heard with Coronel Sanders, for example. And let me show you that we introduced that feature as a skill. Basically you had to say something like, Alexa asked Samuel for the weather, and then you will hear Samuel Jackson saying something. But some people felt that they wanted more direct access to Alexa by, for example, saying, hey, Samuel, what's the weather like? Or something like that. That's exactly what we did. And that came with several challenges because that meant that we had to support a special wayward or a new wayward besides Alexa or whatever. We had to support hey, Samuel. And that's not trivial. Let me show you a video about how this sounds because it's really, really natural. It feels like Samuel is there. So let me show you one video here. Alexa, introduce me to Samuel L. Jackson. Allow me to welcome actor Samuel L. Jackson. Alexa will make sure you're good with the purchase. Then Samuel will ask about explicit content and if you want to add, hey, Samuel, as a wake word. You can also say, Alexa, ask Samuel if you prefer. Let's try it. Hey, Samuel, what's the weather? No, I won't get you to motherf***ing weather. I'm just kidding. Let me see. Tonight's forecast calls for showers with a low of 52 degrees. You okay? Samuel L. Jackson just told me the motherf***. What's going to say? Now, remember, it's the real Samuel L. Jackson. It's not going to walk in. It's just his voice. So this is exactly how it sounds. It's really amazing. And as I said, hey, Samuel, it's a new wake word that has been incorporated and will be available later. But now that we are speaking about multiple wake words, let me tell you about the voice interoperability initiative because this is the perfect time to discuss this. We had experience and context for supporting multiple wake words. For example, multiple car manufacturers today support both Alexa and a custom wake word in parallel. So this initiative tries to bring together multiple companies to democratize Asian invocation on the devices. And Jeff Bezos himself said this about the initiative. Multiple simultaneous wake words provide the best option for customers. Phrase by phrase, customers can choose which voice service will best support a particular interaction. It is exciting to see these companies come together in pursuit of that vision. So we have more than 30 companies right now in this initiative, including Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, Sony, car manufacturers, et cetera, Bosses, Sonos, et cetera. And I can't wait to see what comes out of this because there's a lot of people working together to make this like a joint initiative, which is really interesting. So let's move to the next one. Let's change topic, and this is the final topic of the talk, which is conversational AI, which is definitely my favorite topic, top of the list there. How do we go from transactions, like Alexa turned on the lights, to conversations? That's something challenging, but we are paying a lot of attention to. So let me show you, let's take a look at how a conversation can begin after a transaction, and basically thanks to Alexa being more proactive. Let's take a look at the video and then comment on it. Alexa, wake me up at 6 a.m. Alarm set for 6 a.m. tomorrow. By the way, your living room light is on. Do you want me to turn it off? Yes. Okay. So we call this analogy hunches, which leverages a follow-up candidate to make complete and helpful. But this is the beginning, okay? We can take it to the next level if Alexa can participate, anticipate the customer's latent goals. And that is what the customer really wants to do, because the customer might start asking for something specific, but what they ultimately want to do might be something that maybe Alexa did not detect. And we are working really, really hard on that. So let's take a look at this example. In this example, someone is asking for the weather on a specific beach, okay? And now Alexa is proactively saying, okay, do you want to see the live webcam of that beach? And that was a proactive suggestion by Alexa. This seems very trivial, but actually there are several machine learning models working behind the curtains to make this possible. And this is something that is coming in Alexa. So the first time that we showed latent goal detection was during Remarse. In that event, we showed a technological Alexa conversations. And in that opportunity, we showed an example where the customer wants to plan a night out. The customer might ask for movie tickets, might ask for a ride, might ask for a table reservation, but what the user really wants to do is plan a full night out. Let's take a look at the actual demo from Remarse, but I think it's really, really interesting. And as you watch it, keep an eye on how the logos in the top right of corner change, because those are multiple third parties are not native Alexa experiences. They're multiple third parties skills that are being brought automatically into a conversation. Let's take a look at the video. What are the showtimes for Dark Phoenix on Saturday after 9 p.m.? Here are the showtimes for Dark Phoenix on June 8th after 9 p.m. Give me two tickets for 10.35. Okay, two adult tickets for the 10.35 p.m. show of Dark Phoenix on Saturday, June 8th at Regal Cinnabar Palace Station will be $21. Should I book the tickets? Wait, how long is it? Dark Phoenix is one hour and 52 minutes long. Actually, what are the showtimes after 7 p.m.? Here are the showtimes for Dark Phoenix on June 8th after 7 p.m. Give me two tickets for the 7.05 show instead. Okay, two adult tickets for the 7.05 p.m. show of Dark Phoenix on Saturday, June 8th at Regal Cinnabar Palace Station will be $21. Should I book the tickets? Yes, please. You will receive an email from Adam Tickets with your tickets. Will you be eating out near Regal Cinnabar Palace Station? Yes, find me a Chinese restaurant. Here are some Chinese restaurants near Regal Cinnabar Palace Station. Tell me more about Mott 32. Here's more information about Mott 32. That looks good. Give me a table at 6 p.m. Okay, you'd like a reservation for two at Mott 32 at 6 p.m., should I book it? Sure. You will receive an email from Open Table with the details. Would you like a cab to Mott 32? Yes, get me an Uber. Sure, I'll get you an Uber X for two from home to Mott 32 which will cost about $8. Is that okay? Sounds good. Your Uber X will pick you up at 5.42 p.m. Anything else? Show me the trailer. Now playing the trailer for Dark Phoenix. Ladies and gentlemen of NASA, this is Charles Xavier. Help us on the way. So, as you can see, Alexa proactively suggests next actions. As it is understanding the overall intention of the user to plan a night out. It also carries context. For example, it doesn't forget what the user said when the user asked for the trailer. It remembers the movie. And this is very interesting. I wanted to show it to you because Alexa Conversations is a paradigm shift in how we build Alexa skills and allows us to see a little bit of the future today. We're almost done here. But what if you're having a conversation not with Alexa but with a friend and you still need some assistance? Can Alexa join the conversation and blend in? Two years ago, we took a step toward making Alexa more conversational in something we call follow-up mode, which is opening the mic after each interaction so you could continue the interaction. This mode lets customers make back-to-back requests to Alexa without needing to repeat the wayward. You don't have to say Alexa all the time. Today we introduced natural turn taking, which is the ability for customers to speak to Alexa without using the wayward. I will show you a video so it's much easier for you to understand. And this is the last video and then we close the session. I'm getting hungry. How do you feel about ordering pizza tonight? I could definitely go for some pizza. Awesome. Alexa, join our conversation. Okay, let's talk. I want to order a thin crust specialty pizza from Mike's Pizza. Today Mike's Pizza has the following specialty pizzas. Three cheese delight, meat lovers, veggie supreme, pepperoni party. Okay, what size? Medium. Okay, so I have a medium, thin crust veggie supreme. Do you think a medium is going to be enough? I'm hungry. I'm starving. Change that to a large pizza. Okay, so I have a large, thin crust veggie supreme for $18.75. Would you like to place the order? Yes. Okay, completing your purchase with Amazon Pay. You'll receive an email confirmation from Mike's Pizza. You want to watch a movie while we wait? That sounds good. Let's see what's playing. What movie do you recommend? How about The Goldfinch starring Oaks Feigli? Who directs it? The Goldfinch is directed by John Crowley. What do you think? Isn't it a good movie? The Goldfinch has a rating of 6.3 on IMDB based on 14,000 votes. Play the trailer. Playing the trailer now. Okay, so we have to solve a lot of problems here. Like, for example, are people speaking to each other or are they speaking to Alexa? I'm so sorry to interrupt you. I know you're wrapping up but I need to accelerate you even more because we really are coming to the end and I've got a few questions for you. So, 10 seconds. Yeah, going straight into the final thing. This is the AI stack, right? This is where we are right now in 2014. Phenomena modeling. We are going into intelligent decisions in 2020 and we are hoping we can get into reason and autonomy later but we are not there yet. Just to give you an idea of the current state. Let's go straight into questions. Fantastic. First of all, Hedman, thank you so much. That was a very entertaining talk. I thoroughly enjoyed that. Except for the bit where we see Baby Shark being played in a car. I have to tell you, if Alexa ever plays Baby Shark while I'm driving it's going to learn really quickly that that was a bad idea. But apart from that, apart from that, I really enjoyed it. We started getting into conversations towards the end of the talk. So, I'd like to ask you where is the next level and do you envisage a point where we might be talking to a device such as Alexa not because we have a specific goal, maybe just because we want to be entertained or stimulated or just engage in some form of conversation? I don't really know what the direction is going to be but I think that we have this mission that technology should blend in into what the customer really wants to do. So, the point here is that technology becomes kind of invisible. So, I don't see interactions where things become annoying or depends on customer needs, actually, to be honest. It depends on what their customer really wants, ultimately. So, if that's what you want, it's possibly what's going to happen. But in general, we want technology to be behind the curtains, helping you out. Okay, we have a question from Alvaro and it's all about privacy, which I guess we couldn't escape talking about privacy in some regard. So, can you expand a little bit more? A lot of people are worried about the concerns with privacy with devices such as Alexa listening in on what we're doing? Yeah, I'm not the right person to answer those kinds of questions. They are very sensitive, obviously. But in general, we take privacy very, very, very seriously. And one example that I can give you about that is that today you can talk to Alexa and you can say, Alexa, delete everything I said. For example, that's one of the things. If you don't want to basically have a small fraction of 1% being tagged, for example, to allow Alexa to learn, which is basically what's happening ultimately. So, I think that people shouldn't be concerned, but I shouldn't be saying that. Basically, the customer rules and the customer decides if they want to use this type of technology or not. But we take this very seriously and we are adding a lot of things to keep the customer's peace of mind. Absolutely. A very technical question. What is Amazon doing to mitigate the problem of attribute inference from a voice extract? Attribute inference from a voice extract. If you're not sure about the question, there's an article here that has been referenced in the question. So, perhaps what we will do is ask the questioner to contact you directly via the chat. Can you send that question directly to me? I will ask the person to give me a chance to read the article, but we can continue on Twitter if that person is interested. Okay, that would be great. So, we're nearly up with the time. So, a final question you mentioned that every 10 years there's a paradigm shift in terms of input. So, I can't avoid asking you where are we going to be in the next 10 years? What will be the next paradigm shift? I don't know. My opinion is that people really want to be, I mean, I don't know how to say it, but people want to make things easier all the time. And when you make it easier for people, maybe it could be even easier than that, you know? So, we went from keyboards to touch screens, it became easier. We went to touch screens to voice, even easier. And I don't know what people are going to ask, but probably something that you can control with your mind or something like that. It's just thinking. That seems like the next step. Yeah, just thinking. But I don't think we're anywhere near that yet. Okay, we'll have to wait until big things 2030, I guess, to find out. Absolutely. Well, Germán Vescusov, thank you so much for that amazing talk. Thank you.


And so I am uncomfortable that today Parliament's going to go into urgency to change our labour laws because Warner said so. Well Labour's basically supporting it. We haven't seen the legislation but I would say at this stage I doubt we will because it wasn't a necessary change.


So we've been talking about Corinth and we saw that it's such an immoral city, Paul ministers there, he has a nice team.  Paul does the ministry for, he continues for a year and six months, so 18 months. Remember, we said that's the duration that Paul spent in Corinth. We thank God for his encouragement that keeps us going so that we can serve the Lord powerfully wherever he calls us. So in the midst of whatever is going on, we can now get the idea that, okay, Paul has done good ministry in Corinth. 18 months is a long time in places like Thessalonica hardly a month is what he spent there. But if he's been in a place for 18 months, definitely some kind of a strong church should have been developed in that place. And Paul should have been able to speak the word of God and equip the people in that place. So, yeah, so much has happened over here and there is a church that is thriving. We saw how he went to the home of justice. Justice is a man whose house is close to the synagogue, but at the same time, Christmas, who's the ruler of the synagogue. So there are people in both categories, Gentiles, Jews who are all part of this church in Corinth. And we find that there must have been like something like a mixed order. Again, if you want to use the term multicultural church that has been placed or planted by Paul. And he has different ministers, including people like Aquila and Priscilla who are teaching the church who are raising up strong believers. So, you know, we are happy with the work that has taken place over here. Now, in this church, we'll see that it was a church which had a move of the Holy Spirit. So when we read in the book of Corinthians, we see that because it isn't Corinthians that Paul talks about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the manifestation of the nine gifts and how to move in it. So he speaks of all those things, but there are other matters, you know, fleshly issues which Paul needs to address regarding the Corinthian church. So it's a spiritual church, but it's also a carnal church. So there's a lot of hard work in order to really raise up this church as the kind that God wants it to be. So this is what happens in Corinth. Now, we can move on and see what happened. You know, once God encouraged him, he stayed in Corinth. So in that region, Corinth is a city, but it's in the Achaean region. The Jews get very upset with Paul and then they take this matter to the procuncel or the leader over there or the authority. And this person, the authority, Galeo, is approached for some sort of a decision. Maybe they wanted to throw Paul out or put him in the prison, so they go to him. And it's always God's mercy, isn't it? Even earlier, we saw whenever the apostles got into trouble, suddenly one of the leaders of the council will say something which will help these apostles escape. So a similar situation happened in Corinth. So Galeo, he just tells these Jews, he says, look, if it is a matter of something regarding law, breaking the law, then you come to me. Don't come to me with all your religious arguments, your issues about names and words. I don't have time for those matters. So thank God, you know, Galeo looked at it in that way and he actually did not engage the case of Paul. So the people got very, very upset with him. The Jews were upset with Paul, but also we find that Greeks, they take a man by the name of Sostanus who's a ruler of the synagogue and they beat him up. So most likely because he believed or he must have been a supporter of Paul. So the Jews are upset, the Greeks are upset, but there is no case against Paul in Corinth. So God causes him to escape in that sense. And now after the whole ministry of Corinth, Paul now will move on to his base church, which is Antioch of Syria. So from verse 18, we read on, would someone like to read please? Maybe till verse 23, 18 to 23 and see the movement of Paul. So Paul still remained in a good while, then he took leave of the brethren and set to Syria and Priscilla and Aquila were with him. He had his haircut off at the area for he had taken a vow and he came to Ephesus and left them there. But he himself entered the synagogue and risen with the Jews. When they asked him to stay a longer time with them, he did not consent. But took leave of them saying, I must by all means keep this coming peace in Jerusalem. But I will return again to you. God willing, and he sailed from Ephesus. And when he had landed at Sicily and gone up and greeted the church, he went down to Antioch. After he had spent some time there, he departed and went over to region of Galatia and Pergaea in order strengthening all the disciples. Okay. Thank you, Zellie. So we find the end of the second missionary journey taking place here. And what exactly happens is he moves out of Corinth, but he goes with Aquila and Priscilla. And he goes to another place known as Ephesus. We will talk more about Ephesus later. Ephesus is also a very key city and a city of, you know, like they believe in black magic and they believe in spirituality and the occult. So it's one such city. So he goes there, but he doesn't spend time in Ephesus. He just drops off these two people, Aquila and Priscilla. And he moves on because it is seen that he had a vow to God. So he goes to Sancria and he cuts off his hair because of the vow that he made to God. And he goes to Caesarea and then also goes up to Jerusalem. Okay, because he had certain things in his heart to do. And so he finishes all this. He greets the church and he went down to Antioch is what we learn. So any idea why Paul could have had a vow? Anyone? Very clearly it says there was a vow, right? That he was practicing. He was trusting God for something. Any thoughts or any guesses about what the vow could have been and why a vow at a time like this when ministry is going well? Maybe? Okay, so maybe for Paul to be protected. Yes, that's a thought. Why he may have had a vow. Any other thoughts regarding the vow? Nazareth, law or vow. Okay, yeah, Nazareth vow, that's a slightly different vow. That is for certain people who took it upon themselves. So you have people like Samson, Samuel, I think Samuel is mentioned also. And Jesus, they were all Nazarites. So that vow had to do with not touching anything which is a grave derivative and not to cut your hair. So there were some special things in that. But I don't think this vow which we are talking about is exactly the Nazareth vow. Yeah, but sure, thanks for sharing that. Any other thoughts on why a vow or is a vow necessary? Like he's already a believer in Christ. So why take a vow and all? Is it valid for believers? I think it's not necessary maybe, but nothing wrong with having it maybe. Maybe helps us to have a focus. It reminds us what we are doing. Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's not an essential. We are not instructed to have these vows. But if we want to and if we do make a vow, the Bible encourages us that we must keep it. And the reason why Paul could have made a vow, again, historians, commentators have their own views. One is they say protection. Like as Jafina mentioned, maybe he just needed God's protection upon his life as he was living in Corinth. The other thought is that because it was a morally impure city, it may have been a very challenging time for him to live in Corinth. All the evil things that were going on around him. So having a vow of some sort and seeking the Lord in the midst of the tempting environment could have been a way through which Paul kept his focus. So there are people who say that also just to keep his focus and stay away from the sins of the city he took on a vow. So these are the reasons. And today, as believers, there's nothing that forces us or that instructs us to have a vow as such before the Lord. But if we do dedicate our time and we make certain choices, maybe it will come under the category of fasting. So when we fast, we just make some decisions that, okay, I won't do this, I won't do that unto the Lord. And definitely there is a blessing associated with it. There is a strength associated with keeping such a determined decision before God. So Paul practiced it. Paul was a without Jew like all the other apostles. So it must have been a practice in this culture itself. And that's why he did something like this. Now let me just quickly go to our picture of the second missionary journey because we are coming to an end of the journey by Paul, spending a little bit of time in Ephesus by dropping off Aquila Priscilla. Okay, can you all see properly? Yeah, you can see, right? All right. So we understood about the Macedonian region, the Achaean region. And then we said, okay, he came to Athens. He was alone. He went to Corinth. And then he goes to Sanctria. He cuts off his hair here. Then he comes to Ephesus. In Asia Minor, he drops off his colleagues over there. And though he would like to spend time there, he is not able to. So in the second missionary journey, predominantly his time is spent in Corinth. So we need to remember that Corinth is the place where he spent a lot of his time in the second missionary journey. Ephesus was just a stop by. And then from there, he quickly goes off to Caesarea. Remember, we were told that he spent some time with the church. So what church? By church, they mean Jerusalem. So from Caesarea, he goes, meets with them, spend some time here with the other leaders of the church. And then he goes back to Syria, Antioch. So this is the second missionary journey. About two to three years is the duration of this entire trip. But in the passage that we just read, we saw the missionary journey ended in Antioch. But then again, he went back to the region of Galatia and he was encouraging the believers. We just read that. So the third missionary journey has actually started. So we'll just look at the picture of the third missionary journey and then we will begin to discuss about it. So the third missionary journey. Yes, here you go. So we just started. We said he went to the region of Galatia. So we're right here from Antioch to Galatia. Same old places like where he had gone earlier, if you recall, you know, the Lystra, Iconium, Antioch of Sidia, Phrygia. So these are all the places that we have discussed about earlier. But you see, now he will come to Ephesus. Ephesus is going to be a major, major part of his ministry. So a lot of things are going to take place in Ephesus. We spend a lot of time over here.  So something unfortunate will happen to Paul over here, though he may have wanted to close the loop to go back to Antioch. He will be taken by the Roman authorities. He will be caught by the Roman authorities in Jerusalem. And then, you know, starts his whole trial. He'll have to be explaining before different councils that he's innocent and that he's really not broken the law. And he still continues to preach about Jesus. So that is what we will observe. But as of now, for our understanding, we came to the end of the second missionary journey. We just started the third missionary journey and the most important place of the third missionary journey that we must study about is this particular city known as Ephesus. Okay. So I hope there is clarity and let's get back into our reading of the chapters. All right. So Corinth, we learned about Corinth and, you know, the end of the journey and Paul's wow. Now, let's go on. We will read about a particular individual by the name of Apollos. So I hope we are noticing that the ministry of the early church was not a one man show. Okay. Not at all because there are so many names and, you know, I am literally trying to keep up with the names because I get so confused with all the names over here. But that is so beautiful that there are different people who are getting saved in each city. Leaders are emerging from among these believers and from time to time, leaders are being appointed in the in the different churches. And, you know, the growth of the church is continuing. So though Paul has this apostolic ministry of overseeing from a distance, the work is going on without Paul in the picture and that is so efficient. That's the right way of, you know, ensuring that the church grows in every region and it grows powerfully when there are leaders, right? We need lots of leaders who are pillars in the church. And that's the way that the early church, Paul, the Apostles all planned their ministry. They worked with teams. They worked with other men and women of God. So then you keep hearing these names. You see, when Paul went to Corinth, when he met Aquila and Priscilla, but it was a divine connection. So we need to trust God for divine connections. Sometimes, you know, God brings in those people. They have the right gifting. They have the right, you know, level of maturity. They have the right heart. They serve alongside. And the vision that God put in Paul's heart, he also put it in Aquila and Priscilla's heart. And so Paul could trust them. And because it was a trusting relationship, he went from Corinth. He dropped off this couple at Ephesus, knowing that, yeah, we are going to work together. We will continue the work of God together. I need you guys with me. And then he goes on, finishes his vow, comes back to Ephesus. So that they can work and serve the Lord together. So teams of people, number of people working together based on the giftings that God has given them and the work of God just thriving. So now we have one more individual by the name of Apollos, who is also a good teacher of the word. Now, let's see what the Bible says about this man, Apollos. Would another person maybe read from verse 24 to verse 28, Acts 18. Now, a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and might in scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord and being favored in the spirit. He spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John. So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscila had him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. And when he desired to cross to Assyria, the brethren wrote exalting the disciples to receive him. And when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace. For he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ. Amen. Great. Thank you so much, Rebecca. So what do we understand about this man? He's from Alexandria and he's also an eloquent man. So maybe similar to Paul, he had a scholarly background. So eloquent is to be able to convey our thoughts, communicate our thoughts very fluently and comfortably. So he was able to do that and that's a great blessing. It's a great gift. An eloquent man, that is the capacity he has. But at the same time, the Bible says mighty in the scriptures. So that's a powerful combination. He's able to speak well. He knows the scriptures. He comes to Ephesus. And in Ephesus, we already know that Aquila and Priscila had been dropped off there. And this man, Apollos, he begins to talk about God. So what is it that Aquila and Priscila find out about him? They hear him and they understand that though this man is well versed in the scriptures, his knowledge is limited to John's baptism. He does not know things beyond John's baptism. And so what they do is they take him aside and they actually teach him, explain to him the way of God more accurately. So again, you see the teamwork there. Now think about this. Aquila and Priscila were ministering and then they meet this man, Apollos in Ephesus. They could have been jealous of Apollos and thought that, wow, this guy is brilliant. But it's good for us that he doesn't know everything. He only knows still John's baptism. Let him remain at that same level so that we will have more opportunities in the ministry. You see, they didn't have that kind of an attitude. People were ready to build up other people. So when they saw that this man is called by God, that fatherly heart or that sort of a mentor's heart that is required, they had it. And so they felt that if at all this man knows the scriptures even more thoroughly and everything that the Lord has done about the baptism in the Holy Spirit and about the other teachings that they probably received, wouldn't he be a good minister of God? So they call him aside and the Bible says that they explain to him the way of God more accurately. That is beautiful because that shows their generous heart, that shows their humility, that shows their mentor's heart. And so they invested in this man, Apollos. And when he desired to go to Akaya, so which place is there in Akaya? They are sending him to Akaya but which place is there in Akaya? We just came from there. Paul spent 18 months there. Corinth, yes. So the important city of Akaya is Corinth. Apollos now that he knows the word of God well, he's wanting to go back. He wants to go to Akaya.  So people are helping each other, discovering one another's calling and empowering each other so that they can all serve well. And that's a very wonderful group or a team ministry that we see in the early church. We're happy to have more people on board to serve the Lord. And as Jesus said, harvest is plentiful. The laborers are few. Pray to the God of the harvest to send forth laborers. So we need many, many laborers to have done this amount of work in that region. Only Paul could not have done it. Similarly today, one person is not sufficient to do the work that God has for us. So we need lots and lots of people but we need them equipped. And that is why Apollos, though he was a learned man, there was a need for him to be equipped. Okay, now come let's go to Acts 19. Acts 19 is the next stop of Paul, the city of Ephesus. Okay, the wonderful city of Ephesus and the many things that will go on over here. All right, so we shall move there. What is a little bit about the city of Ephesus? We'll understand. So similar to Corinth, the goddess Aphrodite, in the city of Ephesus, there was the worship of the goddess Diana. And in those days, it is said that there was the largest building in existence of that time which they had built for this particular goddess. And it was even considered among one of the seven wonders of the world.  So he is intentionally going to these mighty cities to preach the gospel. So he goes to this particular city and it has this nice temple. And it is said that this temple was made of pure marble paved streets. And even these are all things that are reported about this particular temple that maybe took like something like 220 years to construct it. So you can imagine the value that goddess Diana had for these people and how much of time and energy they were willing to spend to build her a temple. So again, similar to the Corinthians, the gods and goddesses, they had their own, their expertise or what they could bless people with. So Diana was known as the goddess of fertility. And it was like the image of a multi-breasted goddess and she was worshipped and it was believed that she fell from the sky. So all kinds of concepts about her and people would actually honor her. So in this particular city, when Paul went, one beautiful thing that happened is that it seems like he found some disciples over there. So again, the way we should look at this is by now people were traveling all over the place and a city like Ephesus which is so famous, other believers would have come in there earlier. So to Paul's amazement or maybe not his amazement, there were already some disciples in Ephesus. So he comes here. But one thing that he finds out is that these disciples who are there in Ephesus, they have never even heard about the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit baptism. So do you recall any other place where people became believers but they did not know about the Holy Spirit? And some leaders had to go there. Any other such incident earlier in acts? Just think. Correct. Very good. So Jefina was just sharing that there was a sorcerer and he asked if he could get that power if he paid money. Simon the sorcerer, Samaria, the place where Philip went for ministry and people accepted Christ but they did not know about the baptism in the Holy Spirit. So Peter and John, they go there and they minister to them. And that's when Simon sees them. So very similar. For a minister of God, the responsibility is to help people grow up in God, which includes teaching them everything from the word in order to disciple them. So one of the truths which the Ephesian disciples are missing is the baptism in the Holy Spirit. They are missing about the truth about the Holy Spirit and the manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit. So when he goes to Ephesus, he actually asks them, do they know about it? Do they know about the baptism? And they say no. And then he needs to minister to them with regard to this area. And later we will see that an incredible ministry will happen through his life. Even an unusual ministry will take place through his life. Some unusual miracles will take place and as a result, the city will be very powerfully impacted. But as we've seen in all cities, there is a bunch of people who are willing to receive what Paul is doing. And then there is some sort of an opposition which is also rising up. So let's go ahead. We'll read it in a few sections. We are in Acts chapter 19. Let's read from verse 1 to verse 10, where this whole matter of the disciples coming in saying they don't know about the Holy Spirit. That is happening. Who would like to read this section please? Yeah, yeah.  And it happens while Apollos was at college that Paul, having passed through the upper regions, came to Ephesus and finding some disciples, he said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? So they said to him, we have not so much as had, as much as had whether there is a Holy Spirit. And he said to them, into what then were baptized. So he's, they said, into John's baptism. Then Paul said, John indeed baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on him who would come after him. That is on Christ Jesus. When they had this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke with tongues and prophesies. Now the men were about 12 in all. And he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerns concerning the things of the kingdom of God. But when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the way before the multitude, he departed from them and withdrew the disciples, reasoning daily in the schools of Tyra, Tyranus. And this continued for two years so that all who drilled in Asia had the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. Amen. Sure. Thank you, Lubega. So a couple of things here. So he meets these disciples and unfortunately there are two truths that they are missing. One is about the baptism in the name of Jesus. And the second one is about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So is it possible for someone to be a believer and not know about what a baptism or not know about Holy Spirit baptism? It's possible. We are looking at it right here. Why isn't it the Holy Spirit who helps us be born again? That's true. There are two works that are happening by the Holy Spirit. One is causing someone to be born again. And there are scriptures for that, that we are born again by the Spirit. But at the same time, the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a separate experience. So though we are born again, we may not necessarily be baptized in the Holy Spirit. And so here we find that the early apostles understood that. And that is why when people accepted Christ, one of the things that they led them into is the baptism in the Holy Spirit. So these believers in Ephesus, one is they were not water baptized. So Paul had to teach them about that water baptism and they were baptized in water. Secondly, he had to pray for them for them to be baptized in the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands. And praise God. You know, it says they spoke with tongues and prophesied. Now the men were about 12 in all. So this is the kind of ministry that he did. And even in Ephesus, we find that he went to the synagogue where he boldly spoke for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God. But when somewhere hardened and did not believe, but they spoke evil of the way before the multitude, he departed from them and withdrew the disciples reasoning in the school of tyrannous. So let me see if I can show you any picture. I heard recently there was a friend of mine who went to Ephesus. She went on a tour to all these places, the seven cities in Asia Minor, which I talked about in the book of Revelation. And apparently they also take you to this spot where the school was believed to be there. It was something like a school of theology as it is called. Okay, there's no large picture. I can only see a tiny picture. Okay, somewhat big. Okay, all ruins now. So don't expect it to be nice and shiny. It's all in ruins, but you can see a structure there. And it is believed that when in the synagogues for three months he spoke and he was not very well accepted.  Okay, so imagine with me one and a half years he taught in Corinth. So much he would have taught there. He's teaching in Ephesus. Two years he's teaching in this school of tyrannous. Okay, so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. So Asia Minor, the rest of the continent there in this particular building. Okay, this is all for our imagination. People would have come from the entire region. Okay, so in a way school of tyrannous, it's like a Bible college, isn't it? So the way today Bible college, we all spend time. We have our schedule morning to evening. We learn the word of God. So Paul would have been faculty over here and people would have come, students would have come from all across the region to the city. So it was easy to travel to the city. So they would have come day and night. They are being equipped. They are being taught. Now we don't know how many leaders were raised up through the school of tyrannous. But this was one of the most important things that took place in the city of Ephesus. So yes, he taught in Corinth that was of impact. Okay, people were raised up. But we can understand that a lot many people would have been impacted through the school of tyrannous in Ephesus. Okay, and it's already a city where Diana is prominent. But look at the ministry that Paul is doing. Okay, for a prolonged period of time, he's equipping the believers, equipping the disciples, raising up leaders, a fantastic ministry that has taken place through the school of tyrannous. Okay, so now it's all in, we have to paint the picture all over again in our minds through what is being said here in the word of God. So both Greeks, both Jews have been equipped in the word of God. Now remember when we started the book of Acts, we said the Lord Jesus, he taught and he also healed people. So the demonstration of the power of God is another aspect of ministry. In other places like Philippi, Paul cast out that spirit of divination in the slave girl and Paul and Silas, they were caught into the prison. So something supernatural took place over there. How about Ephesus? Is there anything supernatural that happened through the ministry of Paul? So the next section actually describes the supernatural demonstrations. So really I'll quickly read it for us and explain from verse 11. It says, now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.  Also there were seven sons of Skiwa, a Jewish chief priest who did so and the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are you? Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them overpowered them and prevailed against them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. This became known both to all the Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus and fear fell on them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified and many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds. Also many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all and they counted up the value of them and a total 50,000 pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. So just a glimpse of the supernatural that happened in the city of Ephesus so we read about something called as unusual miracles. There's another place where through the shadow of Peter if you recall people were healed. So right now we are observing that even the apron or the handkerchief which was taken from Paul's body. Now what is this handkerchief about or the apron about? It is said that Paul as a tent maker used to use these handkerchiefs and the apron while he was working. So it was nothing special.  Something so unusual. Now people ask the question like how can this happen? Any idea everyone? How can this happen?  Does it happen today? Can it happen today? I think God is using that as a medium and it can even happen today. Sure, that's true John. So one of the things we say is the anointing. Anointing or the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit is transferable. And which is why in this case maybe through the cloth, the anointing of the Holy Spirit was setting people free. Now this is not for us to conclude that the anointing can go only through medium because you know John said medium. That means there must be some material. Maybe a liquid or a solid or something. That is the medium. The anointing gets transferred through it. But when we consider something like Peter, God healing through his shadow. That's not even a medium. Shadow is what? Shadow is a completely different concept. But God is not limited. He can work through a medium. But even if there's no medium, he can work. So that's the supernatural that we are seeing here. So something very unusual took place and even today it's possible. It's possible. So is it okay to pray over cloths and give it to people? What do you think? Because people were healed by the cloth. Imagine one of you asks for prayer and I say, okay I'm not able to come. Let me pray over a cloth. I'll courier it to you. What would you think about that? Is that valid or not valid? I think I cannot limit what the Holy Spirit can do. But for one I wouldn't do it. You wouldn't do it? Okay, sure. I think it depends on the situation and circumstances. I don't think today we need a cloth. Today we have a phone for which there are so many other ways to connect. It just depends upon the situation, the people. What can we do more to get their faith? In the end we are all just trying to get them closer to God. Have that strong faith. What mean we can use? I think we can just definitely use it. We can't limit the Holy Spirit but it's not about the cloth. That's something I believe so. It doesn't make sense to courier their cloth. Nowadays we can have calls, we can pray over it. Or anything else that we can do. In the end it's about the Holy Spirit. It's about imparting the gifts that He has given us. Very correct. We can choose an appropriate medium such that people are not offended or it builds their faith. In some situations if we feel a cloth is necessary then it's okay. Actually it's fine but we need to let them know that it's not about the cloth. It's actually not the cloth that's bringing the healing to them. As long as people are clear about it that would be good. I know that these days we also have some practices like selling the cloth or selling the oil and selling the stuff. It's best to stay away from things like that because we don't see such practices in the early church. I think with that let's just stop our discussion for today. Maybe we can pick it up from this same discussion and move into the next class. The online students, your assignments are posted. Please make time to do it. All the best for your assignments, e-learners. Your assignments will be up shortly as well. Let's pray right now and close the class. Brother Lubega, would you please pray and close? Father, we thank you for this wonderful 100 hour minutes spent studying the Word of God today. God bless us. Let us not be only hear us but also do as of the Word and we should also be preachers of sound doctrine. Father bless our lecturer. Bless the little ones who are with us and again bless us all the students and also those who have not been able to attend. Let them listen to the video when time is available for them. I do pray that we meet next time in peace, not in pieces. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you Lubega for that prayer. Bless you all. Have a wonderful weekend of worship. Bye for now.


Israel apologists relentlessly gaslight and attack our sense of reality. The Atlantic has a new Israel Apologia article out titled The Decolonization Narrative is Dangerous and False, a noticeable change in tone from the outlet's Decolonize Russia sentiments of last year. The entire article has been picked apart paragraph by paragraph by a commentator named Sana Said, but for my purposes here I'd just like to focus on a specific sentence in it about Israel's ongoing massacre in Gaza. The Israeli goal in Gaza, for practical reasons among others, is to minimize the number of Palestinian civilians killed. If you didn't know that the Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg is a former IDF prison guard who in 2002 said the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality, it would astonish you that such a sentence ever went to print. One need only look at the before-and-after satellite images of the bombing campaign in Gaza to see immediately that Israel is doing nothing at all to minimize the number of civilians killed. One need only look at the fact that nearly 70% of the people killed in these airstrikes have been women and children to see immediately that Israel is doing nothing to minimize the number of civilians killed. One need only listen to Israeli officials themselves saying the emphasis is on damage and not accuracy and Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents, there will be no buildings, to see immediately that Israel is doing nothing to minimize the number of civilians killed. You don't get to openly declare that you're going to do a ton of damage with no regard for accuracy, carpet bomb entire neighborhoods into gravel mostly killing women and children and then say you're trying to minimize civilian casualties. That's not a thing. But that's exactly what the Atlantic instructs us to believe.  You see this kind of thing over and over again from Israel apologists. They tell you things you absolutely know to be false in your own direct perception, over and over and over again to hope that they can overwhelm your mind. That's what's happening when they tell you Israel is defending itself and targeting Hamas when they're mostly killing women and children and bombing entire city blocks into powder.  The term gaslighting has been frequently misused in modern political discourse lately. You'll often see people using that term to describe someone lying or even someone just saying something they don't agree with. But that's not what the term gaslighting historically means. Merriam Webster defines gaslighting as psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories.  And that's exactly what you see Israel apologists doing day in and day out with regard to this conflict. They tell you to doubt your own eyes when you see mountains upon mountains of evidence that Israel is reigning high-tech military explosives upon areas known to be packed full of children. They tell you to doubt your own ears when Israeli officials spout genocidal rhetoric. They tell you to doubt your own intelligence when you talk about the many gaping plot holes and what we're told to believe about October 7th.   They tell you to doubt your own motives when they tell you repeatedly that you support terrorism and want Jews to be killed even when you know nothing could be further from the truth. They tell you to doubt your sense of reality when they tell you Hamas is responsible for all the death and destruction that you can plainly see as being inflicted by Israeli bombs. They're never just telling you what to believe about the world. They are also telling you what to believe about yourself. This is always a tell-tale sign that you are being psychologically manipulated. Anytime you find yourself involved with someone who continually works to change your perception of yourself in a negative way, you would be well advised to disinvolve yourself from them as quickly as possible. Israel apologists need to do all this because they don't have truth on their side and they don't have morality on their side, so all they've got is manipulation. They work so hard to distort your perception of reality because a lucid perception of reality is highly unfavorable to Israeli information interests. Don't let them do this to you. Whenever you get the sense that you are being manipulated by someone, just start ignoring their words and watch their actions instead. Their words can deceive you, but their actions, examined objectively, will tell you everything you need to know about them.