Voices mumble, fingers fumble
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John Markoff in his New York Times blog post, Google, iPhone and the Future of Machines That Listen, raises some important issues. He is talking about Google’s new speech recognition service for the iPhone, which was released on Monday.
He suggests that it will understand you most accurately when you speak to it just the way you enter queries into the Google search box. .. The accuracy is far from 100 percent, and probably not even 95 percent (Google execs demurred when I asked if they had any meaningful accuracy statistics). My experience is that it captures your voice query substantially more than half the time, and that in itself is a revelation.
More and more people seem to be finding that voice recognition systems can often do the job. As cell phones become smaller, it seems likely that speech technology will become the preferred way to input instructions and questions.
Another important influence here may be changing population age structure. Senior citizens may prefer to talk to their cell phone, rather than trying to hit those incredibly tiny buttons. Even if someone mumbles, what they say includes extremely rich data. With the right software, the cell phone can undoubtedly figure out what is wanted. At worst it can ask a question or questions for greater precision.
On the other hand (no pun intended), if you hit the wrong key, the cell phone may still assume that this was intentional. Trying to figure out when the cell phone should question you on whether you intended to hit that key would not be easy. It would also lead to much frustration as the cell phone refused to accept your command.
There are challenges either way, but I believe those facing speech technology will prove to be solvable in very user friendly ways. With all the resources the big guns are applying here, it is likely that acceptable, commercial solutions will be seen within 18 months
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November 20th, 2008 at 2:19 am
I’m tend to share your opinion here, Barry. My dad always asked me, “Why the recently cell phones becoming complicated than ever before?” Sometimes, I was wondering that “simple is the best” too…
December 20th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
I tried to use the voice activation on my cell phone, when I first got it but it never worked. I’d say “call home” and it would say “calling work.” Granted, this was years ago, and I’m sure this technology has come a long way, as all technology has, but as they say “first impressions are the most lasting.” That being said, being a website developer, I should know better than to judge a piece of technology based on how it worked when it first came out.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I was contacted by a telephone solicitation company that not only dropped my information by a digital voice into their part of the conversation but also my reactions were interactvely responded to.
Jeez.