Sam Liang, Otter.ai CEO: AI captures everything

Sam Liang, Otter.ai CEO: AI captures everything

From The Interview by BBC World Service

May 3, 2026 · 23 min

About this episode

Sam Liang, CEO of Otter.ai, discusses the capabilities of AI in capturing and interpreting information.

‘The power of AI is that it's able to capture everything, it’s able to try to interpret everyone objectively. Human beings are imperfect in terms of their capability to listen and understand. Everyone unconsciously, when they listen, they don't hear everything.’ Zoe Kleinman speaks to Sam Liang chief executive and co-founder of artificial intelligence transcription start-up Otter.ai Sam Liang was born in China and moved to the US in 1991. He received a PhD from Stanford University before joining Google, where he led the search engines location services. He co-founded California based Otter.ai in 2016. The start-up has evolved from a voice-to-text transcription service to offer AI-powered recordings of live events, meeting summaries and content searches. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with Karim Beguir, boss of Africa’s biggest AI firm, the former Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard and musical icon Ringo Starr. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three…

People in this episode

Host: Zoe Kleinman

Guest: Sam Liang

Topics covered

  • AI
  • transcription
  • technology
  • business
  • interview

Keywords

  • AI
  • Otter.ai
  • transcription
  • Zoe Kleinman
  • Sam Liang
  • technology
  • business

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Otter.ai, Google

Books & works: The Interview

Places: China, US

More episodes of The Interview

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Interview podcast page.