Is Speech Recognition Finally 'Good Enough'? 313
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.... (Score:5, Funny)
Is spinachry ignition rivaly gooery stuff? What the hell are you talking about?
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe he meant speech wreck ignition?
Can your computer... (Score:2)
You're joking but... (Score:4, Informative)
Dragon requires MONTHS of training (literally), and even then it will make mistakes exactly like the one you noted. The plus side is that Dragon works pretty decently under WINE, but apart from their Linux "support", it's a complete mess.
Screen readers aren't much better; they have the accuracy, but are hard to understand.
For a little geeky fun, I had Kurzweil read a few English papers to Dragon. Even after some training, Dragon still couldn't get above 80% accuracy on a computer generated, 100% reliable, voice. Now that's just sad.
"New Directions" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"New Directions" (Score:4, Funny)
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" (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
beautiful Celtic name (Score:2, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
sierra lima alpha sierra hotel delta oscar tango (Score:3, Interesting)
Any speech recognition software worth the $ should be able to detect and translate NATO letter names [wikipedia.org]: "hotel tango tango papá colon slash slash sierra leema alpha sierra hotel delta oscar tango dot org".
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
"Cape Horn" (Score:2)
Try it with an accent... (Score:3, Informative)
She stood there, trying to get it to write something, and finally ended up repeating, "It not woking! Why it is not woking?"
We were afraid to laugh, fearing a trip to HR... we all stood there, biting the insides of our cheeks, until she gave up and left the room; then, we collapsed on the floor, li
Re: (Score:2)
Funny, when I dictated this sentence to my computer today, it came out "Is Slashdot's Shameless Plug Recognition Finally 'Good Enough'?"
Today somebody at Dragon got moved to a corner office.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dragon is no more... and hasn't been for a long time.
NaturallySpeaking has been sold a few times to various companies.
(I keep track because I worked on V1.0)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Certain industries already make heavy use of this (Score:2)
More goodies! (Score:2)
That's a great one! Here are a few of *MY* favorites:
The translations:
These are all I can rem
Wreck a nice beach (Score:2)
Though to me the problem with dictating text (the obvious use for speech recognition) is the need for some kind of escape for punctuation or program control. I mean, you can't just say "I went to the store period select all cut" because even assuming it recognizes all the words perfectly it wouldn't know if the "period" is supposed to be a word or punctuation, and either way it "assumes" you'd ne
Re:Wreck a nice beach (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
95% sounds good if you're not comparing it to a person. But 5% error rate is horrendous for business use. A secretary who missed one word out of every 20 would be fired after a few hours. A couple decades ago, when I temped for office work, I could transcribe about 80 wpm with close to 100% accuracy, and I was nowhere near the fastest.
If you got a letter from a business containing a typo on almost every line, would you do business with them?
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Also command execution by others in the room is a problem.
How about listening to music, or TV, and having the computer interpreting it.
Re:Problems (Score:5, Informative)
As for stuff like "i really admire your analysis" being interpreted as "i really admire urinalysis," that stuff can easily be ironed out by an n-gram based system that "ranks" English sentences based on probability. What is the chance that "urinalysis" will follow "your" which follows "admire"? Such things can be estimated well enough if you use a large corpus to train your n-gram system (as long as the corpus you're using for this is the same "kind" as whatever speech the SR system is interpreting -- that is, newswire, business meeting, etc.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Glottal stops (Score:2)
As for stuff like "i really admire your analysis" being interpreted as "i really admire urinalysis," that stuff can easily be ironed out by an n-gram based system
Please tell me you're not talking about engrams in Dianetics [wikipedia.org].
that "ranks" English sentences based on probability.
That, or just have speakers adopt the German habit of pronouncing a glottal stop before words that start with a vowel. (A glottal stop is the sound in the middle of "uh-oh".) The test phrase would sound like this [jk0.org], and such a habit would help to disambiguate "your analysis" from "urinalysis" even for a medical transcriptionist, whose language model may have been overtrained with "urinalysis".
Re: (Score:2)
How about listening to music, or TV, and having the computer interpreting it.
Re: (Score:2)
This comment written by MS speech recognition (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It was really entertaining, but I fell into what I call "The Missing Remote" syndrome: If you've ever lost your remote, you will spend 10 minutes looking for it so you can turn off the TV and go to bed, rather than get up and walk over to the TV and turn it off. I thin
Sure (Score:3, Funny)
Depends on what you use it for (Score:4, Insightful)
For typing up an inter-office memo in Word, most likely. But I'm a programmer, and I can barely read out loud some perfectly fine code, I can't imagine trying to enter it all with voice recognition, no matter how good it gets.
Maybe the question should be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you imagine being in a cubicle farm full of people talking to their computers? Or trying to talk to your computer on the bus? You have to imagine that as computers become more ubiquitous, input methods will have to adjust alongside, and I simply can't see (or hear) speech recognition doing that very well.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, how about evesdrop on a few thousand voice circuits and raise a flag when certain key words or phrases are mentioned?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
For typing up an inter-office memo in Word, most likely. But I'm a programmer, and I can barely read out loud some perfectly fine code, I can't imagine trying to enter it all with voice recognition, no matter how good it gets.
Probably because computer languages aren't designed for dictation. It would be interesting, however, if a language were designed for spoken programming rather than typing. What would that look like -- errr, sound like? Code-reviews might get a little wacky though (I'm hearing voices in the computer!).
Re: (Score:2)
Speech recognition is okay (Score:2)
While tying, if I make a typo or something - I either ignore the few wrong letters, correct them really fast (takes a second or two), or the spell checker does it for me. All in all, I am still concentrating on what I was doing.
I have tried Dragon Naturally Speaking ver 5, 7, and the latest one, 9sp1. It really has gotten better throughout the generations but when I dictate a document and something comes out bad - it's an entire
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine someone with a lisp coding LISP via speech recognition...
"cwothe pawenthethith, cwothe pawenthethith, cwothe pawenthethith, cwothe pawenthethith, cwothe pawenthethith, ...."
(My apologies for any insensitivity to those with speech impediments.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno... I mean, the Newton with six months of training had around 98% accuracy... Inkwell's based of the same algorithms, albeit tweaked slightly to accomadate from the difference input peripherals. I bet with a year of real research/development, Apple could take handwriting recognition off that list.
Of course it's good enough (Score:5, Funny)
Not Useful for Coders (Score:2)
Re:Not Useful for Coders (Score:5, Funny)
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.
I would say yes (Score:5, Informative)
I'd say so.... (Score:2)
The only place that speech recognition really annoys me is phone answering systems. They are not competent enough to let you concatenate menu item options and make an intelligent choice as to which phone queue to put you in. For example:
"I have trouble with my cable modem dropping packets" is a statement that 'SHOULD' get you put through to the second tier support li
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
-Rick
Welcome to the new AT&T! (Score:4, Funny)
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: (Score:2)
I'm usually talking to a real person within a minute or so.
Until (Score:2)
Probably the same jackass that told people about the Internet.
speech for programmers (Score:2)
Good enough for what? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA mentions that many people stop using speech recognition software because of poor accuracy. I don't think that's the major reason. I think they start using it because it's a neat idea that seems to have a lot of promise, but quickly realize there are only a few situations where it's actually helpful. The end of the article mentions rough drafts; I'd also say it might be a decent choice
For the majority of office tasks, it just isn't a good fit.
So if the "good enough" is being useful in any way whatsoever, it sounds like we're almost there.
Re:Good enough for what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seeing words laid out as text helps me think. I can compose things better, more coherently.
I'll write an email in an instant, but make me leave a voice mail, and I'll usually hang up first.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
-Rick
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent up! (Score:4, Insightful)
I also can't imagine it'd be that useful for actually writing things. I don't think I'm the only one who revises as they write. I think I actually write better when I write things out by hand, because it's slower so I tend to think my phrasing and sentence structure through more before I commit anything to paper. If I could suddenly type two or three times faster, I think it'd probably make my text even more incomprehensible than it usually is...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
* for transcripts of a single speaker
* informal free-thought when not surrounded by other people
* when you have horrible typing skills
You had me at "* when you have horrible typing skills".
Parent post mentions their 4 year old making pancakes.
At some point, most likely, you expect the kid is going to grow up and get better at making pancakes. There will be
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good enough for what? (Score:4, Insightful)
informal free-thought when not surrounded by other people
I think you're implying something here that is one of the major reasons people don't use speech recognition software: if anyone is around, you feel like a total moron.
You might not realize this, but you probably speak differently than you write. Most of us do, because there are some things that look good in text that sound bad spoken, and vice versa. Also, a lot of composition goes on when writing, and so if you're playing with different word choices so you can see them written out, you just end up sputtering dumb little phrases. It's easier to edit on-the-fly when using a keyboard. And let's not forget that you might not want the people around you to know what you're writing.
Speech recognition IS good enough (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I am using Dragon NaturallySpeaking right now, and it works very well. It actually works better if you speak quickly (as you normally would) and it's pretty good at inserting grammar along the way. I have bilateral tendinitis, and the software has been a godsend for me. I was even able to finish writing my book, a task that was becoming just too painful typing manually.
Oh, and you are probably wondering how long it takes to train the software? About a half an hour, and I find the accuracy at around 95%.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
What does "inserting grammar" mean?
Re: (Score:2)
It means adding commas and periods as you speak to make the text read more natural.
IVR vs VoIP (Score:2)
Pretty good (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Small wording changes can make a big difference -- gener
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We use it. (Score:3, Interesting)
We're using an older version of Microsoft's product and it seems the microphone quality is important.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes and no.. (Score:2)
What about simpler uses? How many basic tasks in the car require you to take your hands off the steering wheel? I'd like to see the basic functionality of the remote control mirrored in speech recognition. Things like stop/pause/increase/skip.
I'd imagine once this kind of simple recognition became common over-all speech recognition would (more) rapidly evolve.
Re: (Score:2)
Zero.
A very few may require taking a hand off the steering wheel, though well designed newer cars tend to solve even that by putting controls on the wheel.
Though to solve the major "hands off the wheel" problem I've seen in other drivers, I'm not sure how voice control would work, anyhow: are you proposing a voice-controlled makeup application system?
Well, if speech recognition gets common... (Score:2)
Speech Reco Software Consolidation (Score:5, Informative)
Nuance support is marginal at best, and through all the consolidations, understanding even within their own company of how the product works is quite lacking. We have found our own developers often times educating the Nuance support folks in various aspects of how the product is working, and then inquiring as to whether this is intended behavior or not. Crickets can often be heard finishing these types of conversations. We normally would have moved to another product under these conditions, but simply put - Nuance acquired what little was left, and now has no competition in the market. Competition is what spurs innovation, and so with the continued consolidation, it is hard to see significant advances in the technology without free help from academia.
If you think the Microsoft monopoly is bad, imagine if they absorbed Apple and somehow took over Linux leaving you with a few "choices", but all under the Microsoft moniker. The technology is very neat and the enterprise level products do some basic things quite well, but there is still some glaring room for innovation that I don't expect anytime soon under present industry conditions.
There's no comparison (Score:2)
That's very different from "your analysis" turning into "urinalysis". Here, the spelling is correct but the words are completely wrong, and trying to figure out what is really meant will take a much longer reading of
Its hard to wreck a nice beach (Score:2)
too anstwer you question. (Score:4, Funny)
It is on my BlackBerry (Score:2)
Speech Impediments (Score:2)
All of the words have too many s's.
great prevention for repetitive stress injuries (Score:2, Interesting)
Zeno's Translator (Score:4, Informative)
Speech recognition has been at a standstill for years now, it's been "almost there now" for well over five years. As mentioned in other posts, there has been a lot of consolidation and that has really hurt growth. Lernout & Hauspie and Dragon were constantly going back and forth a few years ago trying to get a leg up on each other. When L&H got into all of their accounting problems and shut down, that left Dragon and IBM. IBM's product went to Scansoft and went to Nuance where it languishes until somebody pulls the plug (for example, if you call for support on ViaVoice and mention you have XP SP2, they will tell you it is not a supported platform).
Most of the improvement in the Dragon and ViaVoice over the last couple of years has been in the reduction of training required to get to the high-ninety's level of accuracy (assuming noise-cancelling mic in a quiet room and you do not have a cold/sore-throat). The advancements in training have not corresponded to much in the way of translation accuracy. A "trained" Dragon 7 recognizes speech pretty much as well as Dragon 9 (I haven't played with Dragon 10 yet).
Most of the real speech recognition advancement these days is focused on discrete word sets for voice mail trees and other interactive systems. When you are on the phone giving your credit card number, two/to/too is all the same thing. While speech recognition in its current incarnation is good for people who can't type (disabilities, carpal-tunnel, etc.) it is not a replacement for typing, and isn't any closer today than it was five years ago.
Speech Recognition is more than dictation (Score:3, Interesting)
"Good enough" is very vague as applied to voice recognition. For command stuff, "good enough" has been here for about 7+ years. Even MS's free engine does a great job at that.
I used Via Voice years ago and it worked pretty well. But here's the thing: Have you ever tried to dictate something? It's definitely a skill. I'm sure some people have a natural ability for it, but I certainly didn't. I tried dictating stuff and it's tough. You hit a pause mid-sentence trying to figure out how you want to phrase something and suddenly there's a period and you're beginning a new sentence. Try dictating several sentences of original material and keeping it going without pauses and "um"s and so forth and you'll see, it's not quite as easy as it seems. I suspect one of the reasons voice recognition hasn't been a hit, is that people don't expect that. They try it for a few days think, "Hell,it's easier just to type," and give up. That's why I don't use it for writing. I can type faster and more accurately than I can dictate. I'm sure if it's something I wanted to work on, I could develop the skill, but my point is, I think that's probably why a lot of people give up on it.
I honestly think that voice recognition in command mode could be really useful at speeding things up, if software were designed to take advantage of it. But it's not easy to add it as an afterthought and it adds significant work, even if it's done with forethought. It's a chicken and the egg thing. If a lot of software supported it, I think people would see a gain in productivity using whatever software they use daily. I don't mean just using voice recognition, but in combination with a mouse and keyboard. For example: "Execute Browser. google dot com. flying burrito brothers. google search". Saying that would be a pretty fast way of opening your web browser, typing "google.com" and then typing "flying burrito brothers" and then clicking the "Google Search" button. Replace "Google Search" with hitting the enter key and even faster.
But as I said, it's a chicken and the egg thing. Software doesn't support it because there's no demand and there's no demand because people haven't really experienced software that supports it.
Another issue (and I'm sure this has been mentioned by others), is background noise. I like to listen to music or watch TV while I work. Those don't mix well with voice recognition, at least not at the volumes I listen to them. Until voice recognition can get around that and recognize my voice amidst background noise and do it accurately AND software out there generally supports it, it's not going to go mainstream.
Until we get hard ai along with it no. (Score:4, Interesting)
Find all mp3's that were created by Trent Reznor and pipe them to
I can't program in it can I?
if(i_can_write_code_I_mean_speak_code_to_the_comp
i_might_use_it_a_bit();
else
system("find
endif
But that is just me.
pronouncing words "properly" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Which words can be properly distinguished by sound alone (rather than context) varies by accent.
Except in languages where there is an official prescriptive authority, they exist to document actual usage, and often document several variations which can be ambiguous
did you know (Score:2)
that is because, in many languages, a certain order of letters are always pronounced the same way.
Russian is one example..
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For that matter, how do you define the "correct pronunciation" of any given word? The King's English? The President's English? The Prime-Minister's English? The MLA's take on it? Your opinion?
opinions are like assholes. everyone has one and a lot of people are assholes about their opinions. you try messing with people's ideas of language and they will tend to hate you.
Re:Is it really faster, once you factor in checkin (Score:2)
Well if you correct items as you go, yeah you will lose all your speed increase. For a speed increase you would have to dictate your entire document and go back and fix it. This will cut down speed if you are using it for emails, but for technical documents it can be a godsend (you have to go back and proof/edit them anyhow, so just fix is
Re:open source speech recognition (Score:4, Informative)
Sphinx Project at CMU [sourceforge.net]
I have used a variety of open source libraries in addition to 'rolling my own' and for general purposes Sphinx is certainly the most mature option.