When his son was diagnosed with a form of
high-functioning autism, Dirk Müller-Remus
envisaged the kind of future he would have in
the workplace, and didn’t like what he saw: the
global unemployment rate for people on the autism
spectrum remains at around 80 per cent. So, the
German entrepreneur decided to build a company
that would create long-term employment oppor-
tunities for adults who, like his son, have extraor-
dinary cognitive abilities, but often lack the social
skills needed to find a job and retain it.
In 2011, Müller-Remus founded Auticon, a
for-profit social enterprise that hires individuals
on the autism spectrum as IT consultants and
matches their skills to a specific client project.
The Berlin-based company’s clients include Glaxo
Smith Kline, KPMG and the Virgin Group.
Auticon is now managed by Kurt Schaffer, the
group CEO, who expanded the firm’s reach to the
UK, France, Italy, Switzerland, Canada and the
US. Auticon says it currently employs more than
200 people with a variety of autism diagnoses.
Lars Backstrom joined Auticon UK in early 2018
after being out of full-time employment for eight
years. He was diagnosed with autism as an adult
and has struggled most of his life with social inter-
actions. “If you don’t form social networks at work,
you tend to be a target to be picked on,” he says.
Backstrom is now a consultant for KPMG in
London, where he uses complex analytics tools
to support the audit team. He requires two key
elements to make him feel at ease in the workplace:
patience and clarity. “I don’t like being pulled in
too many directions at once,” he says.
Auticon job coaches are paired with the
consultants to liaise with clients on their behalf.
While the consultants perform the IT tasks, the
job coaches convey the needs and special require-
ments of the consultants, as they sometimes find
it hard to interact with others. Some autistic
individuals don’t want to shake hands, for example,
or don’t wish to be put on the spot in a meeting. The
coaches will make sure clients are aware of this.
Over the past few years there has been a big
push in autism advocacy and awareness in the
UK, spearheaded by entities such as Auticon
and the National Autistic Society. But one of theWORK SMARTERWhether it’s recording notes from a conference,
sharing a meeting memo with colleagues, or
typing up audio from an extended interview,
transcription is the enemy of productivity.
Automated dictation apps and transcription
services offer a potential solution, but issues
around accuracy, cost and turnaround abound.
Sam Liang, a former Google platform architect,
realised It’s just the kind of problem that artificial
intelligence eats up – so he developed Otter AI,
a freemium note-taking app that uses AI to
transcribe, remember, search and share voice
conversations. It’s free for 600 minutes a month,
with premium services at up to $12.50 (£10) extra.
Users record audio using a smartphone
running the Otter app, and the software
automatically turns it into text in near real time.
(Dictaphone recordings can be uploaded via
Otter’s web portal.)
Multiple voices are
recognised, and the text
is saved to the cloud.
“Journalists use the
technology for interview
notes, creative agencies
use it to process
qualitative research
interviews, students use
it to take notes in class,”
says Seamus McAteer,
general manager of
revenue and
partnerships for Otter.
There are also examples
of podcasters using Otter to make show notes,
he adds, but the most common use case is
minutes from meetings which, with multiple,
overlapping voices to contend with, push the
voice separation and identification, audio
synchronisation and keyword extraction
capabilities of the in-house AI. Tuning for
accents, filtering for background noise and
support for proper names, jargon and acronyms
are in development, as is an option for recording
phone calls. Will Bedingfield ot ter.aiHOW AI CURESTRANSCRIPTIONMISERYThe exquisite pain of typing out audio
recordings is set to be a thing of the past –
just get artificial intelligence to do the workPHOTOGRAPHY: NICK WILSON. ILLUSTRATION: MIGUEL PORLAN. SPOT ILLUSTRATION: SODAVEKTENHANCED PRODUCTIVITY 08411-19-WSAuticonOtter.indd 56 03/09/2019 12:51