Lesson 1142 of 1455
Interviewing for Your Project: How AI Transcribes and Codes Themes
Otter.ai and Whisper transcribe interviews free — then Claude can code themes the way grad students do for $1000.
Builders · Research & Analysis · ~15 min read
The big idea
For oral history projects or capstone interviews, transcription used to take hours. Now Otter does it live, and Claude can pull the patterns.
Some examples
- Otter.ai free tier: 300 minutes/month of live transcription
- OpenAI Whisper API: $0.006/min, more accurate for noisy audio
- Prompt Claude: 'Identify the 5 main themes across these 4 transcripts'
- Ask AI to find quotes that contradict your hypothesis
Try it!
For your next project interview, record (with consent) into Otter. Drop the transcript into Claude with 'Find 5 quote-worthy moments.'
Practice this safely
Try this with a school, hobby, or family example where the stakes are low. Use the AI output as a draft you can question, not as the final answer.
- 1Ask AI to explain interview in plain language, then underline anything that sounds uncertain or too broad.
- 2Give it one detail from "Interviewing for Your Project: How AI Transcribes and Codes Themes" and ask for two possible next steps plus one reason each step might be wrong.
- 3Check transcription against a trusted source, teacher, adult, expert, or original document before you use it.
End-of-lesson quiz
Check what stuck
8 questions · Score saves to your progress.
Lesson help
Questions are best handled with a grown-up here.
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