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Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

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Re: Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

#111

Post by dharma1 »

dragontamer wrote: post #32
ddevault wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - I don't care how good Google gets it, this is an unsolved problem until I can do it with open source tools operating without an internet connection.

Google has basically invented a special processor with a very, very, VERY weird architecture for these sorts of tasks: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx4hafXDDq2EMzRNcy1vSUxtcEk... I don't think this level of computational power can be achieved on a modern CPU, or even a GPU! But GPUs are probably the closest analog to Google's absurdly parallel architecture. To get a GPU working at maximum performance, you either…

You're right in that TPU's allow Google to train very large datasets faster and using less power. But I think a reasonable ASR model should be trainable with GPUs alone.

The issue previously has been a lack of large enough high quality annotated datasets, and open source ASR libraries being a bit behind or not well integrated with cutting edge deep learning. I think that's changing now though. I hope it won't take too long until pre-trained, reasonable size and high accuracy TensorFlow/Kaldi models for many languages are common.

Re: Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

#112

Post by nmcfarl »

adrianbg wrote: post #100
ghaff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I looked a while back, CMUSphinx seemed to be the most promising option but I struggled to get it installed and got distracted with real work. Some discussions online suggest it’s still fairly poor compared to the online engines. Snips was mentioned here recently but I haven’t taken a look at it.

CMUSphinx is really old. Kaldi is hard to use, but it's much better.

The first time I read this I misunderstood it's meaning. I now believe the parent is discussing the differences in usability not output. In which case I completely agree.

However I will say that for my company's use case a properly configured sphinx install produces better results than kaldi. However, getting to a point where you can say that was not an easy task.

Additionally, I actually believe that for most workloads that kaldi is likely better. Not ours though.

Re: Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

#113

Post by adrianbg »

pishpash wrote: post #109
adrianbg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct that the problem is data. Kaldi is hard to use, but making it easier to use isn't as hard as getting good training data. Mozilla's project is a good start for some purposes. One flaw with it is that they're having people read sentences. When people read, they tend to speak more clearly than when they're figuring out what to say on the fly. This means models trained with Mozilla's data will tend to nee…

Oh it's not "hard" to get training data, you just need loads of money to buy the existing datasets.

Hah sure. By "hard," I meant that it's the largest hurdle. And probably even the common research datasets aren't enough to give you results competitive with Google, etc. AFAIK Google uses its own hand-transcribed data.

Re: Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

#114

Post by nothrabannosir »

autokad wrote: post #104
noir_lord wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd never heard of APD. Interesting, all my life I've struggled to follow a conversation in a crowded environment, so much so that I actively avoid background noise with words in, I work with silicon ear plugs in or headphones and music with no lyrics. Looking at NHS symptoms they describe me as a child, didn't learn to read until I was 8. I nearly ended up in the remedial track but for a single awesome teacher who s…

wonder if i have that. i always try to fill in words with context or words that rhyme with the sound. - when people talk on tv, i need the volume at 95%, everything else like 4 bars. - i hate phones because only one ear gets the information, headphones makes talking on the phone so much more relaxing. - i dont understand how anyone understands anything at clubs, how is that even possible?

> i dont understand how anyone understands anything at clubs, how is that even possible

Mostly, I don't. Earbuds help for some weird reason, as does pressing your ear shut. Looking at their mouth does 80% of the work. And most conversations I have in clubs are pretty mundane and uninspired. “What do you want to drink?” “This DJ is good. Do you also think this DJ is good?” “Do you agree with late justice Earl Warren that Baker v Carr was the most important supreme court decision of his era?” etc... Low entropy, easy to error correct.

Re: Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

#115

Post by nkkollaw »

I would also like to confirm that speech recognition in language other than English is completely not solved.

In Italian, for instance, any device will barely be able to recognize what you're saying, and will almost always do something completely different from what you've asked.

Re: Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

#116

Post by dharma1 »

pishpash wrote: post #109
adrianbg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct that the problem is data. Kaldi is hard to use, but making it easier to use isn't as hard as getting good training data. Mozilla's project is a good start for some purposes. One flaw with it is that they're having people read sentences. When people read, they tend to speak more clearly than when they're figuring out what to say on the fly. This means models trained with Mozilla's data will tend to nee…

Oh it's not "hard" to get training data, you just need loads of money to buy the existing datasets.

or have more effective ways to collect tons of open source speech data. The Mozilla Common Voice project is really cool, but they should make it way easier for people to contribute.

Like, adding a mic button for voice search next to their main search toolbar on Firefox, and then ask for permission to use that data for research.

Re: Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

#117

Post by aaronblohowiak »

fillskills wrote: post #43
noir_lord wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd never heard of APD. Interesting, all my life I've struggled to follow a conversation in a crowded environment, so much so that I actively avoid background noise with words in, I work with silicon ear plugs in or headphones and music with no lyrics. Looking at NHS symptoms they describe me as a child, didn't learn to read until I was 8. I nearly ended up in the remedial track but for a single awesome teacher who s…

Wow, I wish there was an easy way to pay back star teachers or mentors.

Write them a handwritten letter and make sure it gets to them.

Re: Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

#118

Post by notlarrypage »

I think that some speech recognition systems depend too much on language model priors. This works well for routine tasks where most of the speaker's words are easy to predict. It fails when the speaker's words are specific or unusual.

For example, try speaking the words: "OK Google, the thick round box jumped over the hazy bog."

Re: Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

#119

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

MereInterest wrote: post #95
squeaky-clean wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I think Google recently saying 95% word accuracy is just as good as a human is wrong. If I ask if you after dinner if you "Want to get a pizza cake", you'll probably quickly realize I mean "piece of cake". Mistakes like that in 1/20 words is a lot. Google is the best of all the big players at figuring out this context (I once asked it what a Dead Left Shrimp was, apparently I was mishearing the name of ba…

Not only that, but even if you were to get 100% word accuracy, context is still important for choosing between multiple possible meanings. As an example, I was being directed by Google Maps to a new place, and I asked it "What is the ETA?" It responded, "From Wikipedia, the estimated time of arrival or ETA is the time when a ship, vehicle, aircraft, cargo or emergency service is expected to arrive at a certain place.…

I think you give humans too much credit. If it were so, this joke[0] wouldn't be funny.

s/Microsoft/Google/g s/Seattle/Mountain View/g

[0] http://alunthomasevans.blogspot.com/2007/10/old-microsoft-jo...

Re: Speech Recognition Is Not Solved

#120

Post by adrianbg »

dsacco wrote: post #16
johnramsden wrote: post #6

What I would like to see you would be an open source speech recognition system that is easy to use, and works. There is really no match for the proprietary solutions in the open source world right now, and that is disappointing. Not to say that there aren't open source speech recognition systems, they just aren't completely usable in the way proprietary solutions are. A lot of research goes into open source speech re…

Is it an issue of open source software being inadequate, or is it the lack of sufficient training data and compute power local to your home? I’m under the impression that Google is mostly dogfooding its open source tooling for machine learning in GCP, and actually differentiates based on trained models and compute power.

The problem wrt open source / free solutions is data. Kaldi is open source and gets state of the art results -- but the data costs a lot of money. Training the models is doable on a commodity GPU although it takes quite a while.
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