About Ziv Aviram
Ziv Aviram, co-founder and CEO of OrCam, has been promoting the company's wearable assistive device, the OrCam MyEye 2, in media appearances. In a July 2018 interview on BBC, Aviram described the device as "the most advanced wearable device in the world" for assisting visually impaired and blind people. He explained that it attaches to the arm of any pair of glasses, uses a camera and speaker, and operates offline without an internet connection to preserve user privacy. Aviram stated that the device can help users read, identify faces, money, and products, and that it is sold in 29 countries covering 18 languages. He noted the price is about $4,500, adding that he believes the cost will decrease over time.
In a May 2018 TEDx talk, Aviram discussed how artificial intelligence can improve lives, citing both OrCam and his previous company, Mobileye, which was acquired by Intel in 2017. He said OrCam was founded eight years ago and aims to improve the lives of more than a billion people. Aviram also addressed autonomous driving, stating that Mobileye technology is being adopted by a majority of automakers and that autonomous vehicles could save millions of lives by reducing human-error-related accidents. He argued that society applies a double standard to technology-related casualties and suggested it is time to "embrace technology with more confidence."
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Ziv Aviram's recent appearances.
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Transcript (12 segments)
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Interviewer0:11
Hoping to cash in on the growing demand is called OrCam. Yeah, it makes a device which sits on a pair of spectacles and uses optical character recognition to see. Let's get more. Ziv Aviram is the co-founder and the CEO of that very company. Great to have you with us. Listen, you've got it, I can hear it talking already. Explain how this device works briefly.
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Ziv Aviram0:40
This is today the most advanced wearable device in the world that can assist visually impaired and blind people. The way it works, you just locate it on a very strategic place on your face, which is on the arm of any pair of glasses. All you should do is just point at the text. I just read your introduction there, so I know we're not going to be out of here. The only thing that I have to do is just point at the text. This is for visually impaired, severely visually impaired, blind people, visually impaired people that cannot read anymore, the glasses cannot correct their sight. Unfortunately, there are 350 million people. We already sell it in the UK, in the United States, in 29 countries, and we already cover 18 languages, so most of the languages of the world.
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Interviewer2:23
Is there anyone else out there? Do you have competitors with similar devices?
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Ziv Aviram2:31
This is the only device that works offline in real-time, which means we don't need an internet connection. That's important. We don't even use cloud services, so we keep full privacy of our customers, which is very important nowadays, and it can work everywhere.
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Interviewer2:48
Could it do translation?
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Ziv Aviram2:50
Yes, it can do translation. We can connect through Google Translate.
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Interviewer3:10
Sounds like a lot, but I guess the price is worth it. People will pay a lot for this sight.
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Ziv Aviram3:15
We founded the company eight years ago. It's my problem, Professor Amnon Shashua, it's our second company. Our first company was Mobileye, which does autonomous vehicles. It's a huge investment, a lot of development. I believe with time the price will go down, but usually new companies come with very sophisticated technology, the price starts higher and goes down very quickly.
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Interviewer3:35
Indeed. Now you said globally, right? Where are your big markets?
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Ziv Aviram3:50
There are also disorders like dyslexia, people that cannot actually read more than 30 million people involved. Dyslexic citizens still can read but get tired very quickly. With this device they can continue to read. It turns a book into an audiobook, if you will, because you can read whatever you want.
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Interviewer4:28
I've got a rep and I'm wondering if people around the world, especially on Wall Street, are looking at this going, hey, we might want to invest in this because you...
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Ziv Aviram4:34
Yes, we are a public company on the New York Stock Exchange, ticker symbol O-R-C-A-M. We have a market cap of about $1.5 billion. We are growing very fast, and we are always looking for investors who believe in our mission to help the visually impaired.
