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Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

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Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#61
post #43

Finally google has caught up to 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking Sure it might work better now, but that's expected when computers are much more powerful than a pentium 100 with 32MB of RAM. Uploading voice to google servers for processing was always just a data grab.

I used Dragon dictation in the 90s.

You had to spend an age just training it to your own specific voice and choose microphone carefully, neither of which are steps this requires. Not to mention the syntax for punctuation etc.

So no, I would not argue this is catching up the the 90s.

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#62
post #58
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why people think that recurrent architectures are somehow more noise-tolerant. Where did this come from?

They're not that I know of. But the paper cited is just showing relative parity or slight improvement on relatively toy examples. The claim that convnets are the clear winner for speech in general/what everyone is doing now is just not true. I work in the field, a more accurate summary would be that there are a number of viable architectures that currently get fairly similar accuracy, but that have other pros/cons wi…

Ok, so what are the advantages of RNN over CNN based models for speech to text, with respect to any one of those factors you mentioned?

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#63
post #43

Finally google has caught up to 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking Sure it might work better now, but that's expected when computers are much more powerful than a pentium 100 with 32MB of RAM. Uploading voice to google servers for processing was always just a data grab.

They've had offline voice recognition since Honeycomb at least. This is just their newer/better system coming soon. If you wanted you could go into airplane mode right now and dictate a novel.

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#64
post #34
post #2

"But it’s sort of funny considering hardly any of Google’s other products work offline. Are you going to dictate into a shared document while you’re offline? Write an email? Ask for a conversion between liters and cups? You’re going to need a connection for that!" While offline, you might write email drafts, your blog, or even a book: https://medium.com/@augustbirch/what-i-learned-writing-an-en... What's missing is t…

Google Maps has an excellent offline mode on iOS and Android. I wish Apple Maps had that too.

It's one of those features that makes one think... Why am I being notified about this at all? Can't this be taken care of without my input?

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#65
post #43

Finally google has caught up to 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking Sure it might work better now, but that's expected when computers are much more powerful than a pentium 100 with 32MB of RAM. Uploading voice to google servers for processing was always just a data grab.

Well, try to train your Dragon (no pun intended) and then let another person speak, possibly someone with a different accent. GBoard works somewhat reliably with 0 training and my Italian accent, that's an apple to oranges comparison.

> Well, try to train your Dragon (no pun intended)

The training was in part due to the hardware limitations. Some versions let you skip the training or have only a small training session and let it learn as it went, I'd be surprised if googles systems weren't doing some sort of continuous learning too.

> and then let another person speak, possibly someone with a different accent.

It had profiles to handle that, although it needed training for each profile. With google does it automatically switch profiles or does it mess up what it's learned about you're voice? It's very opaque.

> GBoard works somewhat reliably with 0 training and my Italian accent, that's an apple to oranges comparison.

I haven't tried the new system but all of google voice recognition has struggled with my Australian accent to the point of being unusable.

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#66
It would be nice if Siri would at least allow me to turn cellular data back on with a voice command. Turn-to-turn navigation tends to consume a lot of data when I'm abroad using a temporary SIM so I drive without network connection on offline maps but that kills Siri meaning I can't do anything anymore without touching my phone.

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#68
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another benefit is privacy, this eliminates an entire set of potentially personal data from being handed off to Google.

On the other hand, when you can transcribe locally, uploading whole days worth of eavesropping would not cause a noticeable spike in traffic. I'd consider it more a lateral change than an improvement.

install a firewall (there are root/no root) options) and block google keyboard's internet access.

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#69
post #30
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feedforward CNNs cannot tolerate as much noise and real-world variability as RNNs.

Citation?

There is this new type of trolling where someone just puts in bare minimal counterarguments and asks for citations knowing full well it's labour intensive to do so. If your not trolling.. your not doing a good job of avoiding these comparisons. The onus should be on you here to provide citations first that dissprove the person your replying to.

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#70
post #66

It would be nice if Siri would at least allow me to turn cellular data back on with a voice command. Turn-to-turn navigation tends to consume a lot of data when I'm abroad using a temporary SIM so I drive without network connection on offline maps but that kills Siri meaning I can't do anything anymore without touching my phone.

Disable mobile netork for Maps specificially, while keeping it on for everything else.
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