Is Speech Recognition Finally 'Good Enough'?

jcatcw writes "Speech recognition software is fast, but it still may not be accurate enough. Clerical jobs usually ask for 40 wpm, but speech recognition software can keep up with someone speaking at 160 wpm. In Lamont Wood's demo it did very well at too/two/to and which/witch, but will it still render 'I really admire your analysis' as "I really admire urinalysis'? At 95% accuracy, people aren't jumping on the bandwagon. Wood's typing speed is about 60 wpm with 93% accuracy, so he found that using speech recognition was about twice as fast as typing. Those who type at hunt-and-peck speeds will experience results that are even more dramatic. There's really only one product on the US market: Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance Communications. The free versions from Microsoft aren't up to the task and IBM sold ViaVoice to Nuance, where it's treated as an entry-level product."

Hmmm....

[DoofusOfDeath]

Is Speech Recognition Finally 'Good Enough'?

Is spinachry ignition rivaly gooery stuff? What the hell are you talking about?

This comment written by MS speech recognition

[TodMinuit]

Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.

Sure

[springbox]

In fact, I'm using it to write this Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all

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[account_deleted]

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Of course it's good enough

[ral315]

I use it myself. It's wonder full. delete that. delete that. delete that. double the killer delete select all

Re:Hmmm....

[value_added]

What the hell are you talking about?

Maybe he meant speech wreck ignition?

"New Directions"

[parvenu74]

I used to work for a company that has the words "new directions" in their name. When I told people where I worked I would make a rather long pause between the "new" and "directions" so as not to sound like I was saying something else. I wonder how this software would render it...

Pretty good

[Richard McBeef]

95 percent is pretty good, only one word in twenty. I wouldn't have a problem with a 5% error ate.

Re:Hmmm....

[__aaclcg7560]

The funny thing is why haven't Microsoft mastered this technology yet? You would think with the billions of dollars they spend on R&D that they could up with better speech recognition. And funky AIs shouldn't be too far behind.

Welcome to the new AT&T!

[poptones]

Press or say one to speak with a representative in english...

One

When you hear the option you are calling about you may say it at any time. If you are calling about a billing problem, say billing. If you are calling about a technical issue, say technical. If you are calling about new service, say new customer. If you are...

Billing

I'm sorry, that is not an option. When you hear the option you are calling about you may say it at any time. If you are calling about a billing problem, say billing. If you are calling about a technical issue, say technical. If you are calling about new...

Billing!

I'm sorry, that is not an option. When you hear the option...

Billing billing billing!

I'm sorry, that is not an option. When you...

Fuck you! Give me a human! Human human human!

I'm sorry, that is not an option. When you hear the option...

Re:Not Useful for Coders

[Tackhead]

> "Set v underscore tab equals space parenthesis parenthesis x minus lev schema dot all recs concatenate..."

Yeah, but if you put a beat to it, you've got something.

{ } . ! /
& ; ^ # -
< > @ \
{ } _ SYSTEM HALTED

"Left titty, right titty, dot bang slash.
Ampersand semicolon, caret pound dash.
Less than greater than, at back slash,
left titty, right titty, under score crash!"

* # ! ! (
~ & | )
' " . . DEL
# ^G ! ! working... done.

"Star pound bang bang, open-paren.
Tilde and pipe, close-paren.
One quote, two quote, dot dot delete,
pound bell, bang bang, process complete!"

Google's USENET archive dates it back to 1990, but it predates the 1990 post ("Stuck Shift Key Poetry") to rec.humor.funny by several years.

You haven't lived until you've seen a dozen drunken geeks trying to sing "Waka Waka", or the entirety of "Hatless Atlas", while seeing only one character at a time. Well, maybe you have, but this is Slashdot.

Re:"New Directions"

[sd_diamond]

I used to work for a company that has the words "new directions" in their name.

Please tell me the first two words in the name weren't "Coming From".

Re:"New Directions"

[TrippTDF]

Reminds me of when the company "Pen Island" or "Mole Station Nursery" set up their domain names...

too anstwer you question.

[geekoid]

Yeth.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:"New Directions"

[Anonymous Coward]

And let's not forget the Italian energy company Powergen Italia... their name makes for a wonderful .com address!

beautiful Celtic name

[Simonetta]

People sometimes get upset when they can't give their new daughter the name that sounds like " She-thay-hahd", but is spelled Shithead.

Re:"New Directions"

[Champ]

Call me immature but I still get a mild chuckle out of, er, expert-sex-change-dot-com and part-sex-press-dot-com. Wait, what's the other part?

Re:Wreck a nice beach

[Montag2k]

Sounds like someone wants to use Vi with their speech recognition engine!

Re:"New Directions"

[Anonymous Coward]

> Reminds me of when the company "Pen Island" or "Mole Station Nursery" set up their domain names...

Does everyone remember the days when experts-exchange.com didn't seem to feel the need to use a hyphen?

Elevators...

[HobophobE]

I'm still waiting for speech recognition to come to our elevators so I don't have to touch the dirty buttons.

Also so I can pretend I'm on the Enterprise.

Re:"New Directions"

[Instine]

People want machines to be better than people. They still have this 'infalibility' hang-up. That a machine is more determanistic, and thereby, is either right or wrong. I'm not stupid, but for a bit, when people said "/. was worth looking at" in blogsor whereever, I actually wondered how I'd find it. Then when I finally heard someone say "slash dot" I kept trying URLs with hyphens. Not for long, and clearly I've found it. But for weeks I was intregued by /. but couldn't figure out where to look (you can't google "/.").

So the question should be, are humans ready?