Will Oremus from Slate puts his money where his mouth is. He uses voice recognition technology on his phone to write up a Slate article on the vast improvements of voice recognition technology :) Ok, so the article includes some funny transcription mistakes (can you say typos in this case?). Some pitfalls are homonyms and punctuation marks, which you have to say out loud. On the whole, however, the technology is improving by leaps and bounds.
According to Oremus, we have come a long way from Siri’s first appearance about four years ago. Siri was initially more of a funny trick than a helpful tool. But the times seem to have changed. Siri has become much more reliable, and Apple now has good voice recognition for Notes and Mail. However, according to the author, Google is now the leader in voice recognition technology. They have done such a good job that dictation is now in some cases better and quicker than typing, and this is ever more the case with devices like Google Glass, which do not admit typing. Another interesting development is the Amazon Fire TV, which will also feature voice recognition. It makes me wonder if, 10 years from now, we can expect all keyboards and remote controls to disappear from our lives. If you can tell the TV to change the channel, why use a remote?
The challenge in this technology is getting a machine to do what our human brains have been doing for ages. The technology has to distinguish your words from background noise and speech, and then try to figure out your exact words from the context. However, this doesn’t seem to be deterring companies like Google, Apple, and others like Intel, which hope to cut the Internet out of speech recognition technology. Makes you wonder what lies ahead, and if in the future, I might be able to tell my blender to start blending while I am stir-frying my meat.
According to Oremus, we have come a long way from Siri’s first appearance about four years ago. Siri was initially more of a funny trick than a helpful tool. But the times seem to have changed. Siri has become much more reliable, and Apple now has good voice recognition for Notes and Mail. However, according to the author, Google is now the leader in voice recognition technology. They have done such a good job that dictation is now in some cases better and quicker than typing, and this is ever more the case with devices like Google Glass, which do not admit typing. Another interesting development is the Amazon Fire TV, which will also feature voice recognition. It makes me wonder if, 10 years from now, we can expect all keyboards and remote controls to disappear from our lives. If you can tell the TV to change the channel, why use a remote?
The challenge in this technology is getting a machine to do what our human brains have been doing for ages. The technology has to distinguish your words from background noise and speech, and then try to figure out your exact words from the context. However, this doesn’t seem to be deterring companies like Google, Apple, and others like Intel, which hope to cut the Internet out of speech recognition technology. Makes you wonder what lies ahead, and if in the future, I might be able to tell my blender to start blending while I am stir-frying my meat.