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25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer

matthewkaras.medium.com

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Re: 25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer

#71

Post by sida »

One thing I haven't seen discussed is the poor affordance / discoverability of speech technology.

Google Home can do some clever things however, it also does not have the ability to do some very basic stuff. As a user, how do you know what Google Home can do and cannot do?

It is just trial and error. And if Google Home introduces a new feature to be able to complete new types of queries. What now? How does a user know that last month it wasn't able to do something and this month it is able to do that thing.

And lastly, the interface of voice is very clunky. It has no concept of temporal memory like

Me: "Ok Google, navigate to the nearest safeway" Google: "navigating you to the nearest gas station"

The natural thing to say is "no, I meant safeway nott gas station" however, I now have to say "Ok Google, navigate to the nearest safeway".

This is analogous to if keyboard had no backspace and you have to retype everything everytime you have a typo. Well that's the state of speech technology right now

Re: 25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer

#72

Post by dec0dedab0de »

ketzo wrote: post #48
lqet wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly why I prefer formal query languages over NLP queries. In both cases (at least with most state of the art NLP techniques), you have to learn certain patterns and ways to phrase a query so that the system will reliably understand it. With formal query languages, these patterns are well-defined, can be looked up and will most likely not change significantly (so there is value in memorizing them). With N…

Well, to extend the GUI/console metaphor, it means that at some point soon, we'll all be using NLP because it's dramatically more user-friendly for the vast majority of people.

I understand your point, but I'm not sure that GUIs won out because they were dramatically more user-friendly. It certainly helped, but I think they won because it made multitasking possible. Multitasking from the users perspective that is, the ability to interact with more than one application at the same time. That was just not possible on a console, so even people who didn't need user friendliness were able to do things they couldn't do before. I was young at the time, but that's how I remember it at least.

Re: 25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer

#73

Post by mikestew »

dheera wrote: post #5

A big problem with the assistants is that as soon as they fail at a query they seem stupid, I feel stupid, and I stop using them for a long time. Last weekend I had the following failed queries: "OK Google, what is the air quality like at Mt. Shasta today?" "OK Google, add a waypoint for the last gas station before the mountain pass" "OK Google, what percentage of people can you detect to be wearing masks on recent I…

A big problem with the assistants is that as soon as they fail at a query they seem stupid, I feel stupid, and I stop using them for a long time.

Raise your hand if you remember the early days of Xbox "recognition", as you listen to other people in your party:

"Xbox, record. XBOX, RECORD. X...BOX, RE...CORD."

It's the reason that "oh, we can't sell an Xbox without a Kinect" Kinect went into the garage after a few months.

Re: 25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer

#74

Post by dheera »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #57
jkaptur wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can set my own alarms, thank you. And not only that, but a specialized user interface is often preferable to voice even when the assistant passes the Turing test. There's a reason that people use apps to get food delivery rather than calling.

> There's a reason that people use apps to get food delivery rather than calling. Well, if I had some type of personal assistant who worked for me (as in, a real human), I would just call out "Hey, Sam, please order pizza for me" and continue with whatever I was doing. The reason people don't make phone calls is they add a lot of additional friction. You have to dial the number, and wait for someone to pick up, and g…

I don't know, I like swiping through photos of food to make my decisions on what to eat, and then it only takes about 30 more seconds to complete the order at most.

Re: 25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer

#75

Post by bserge »

Finnucane wrote: post #35

I can barely manage to talk to people. Why on earth would I want to talk to a box?

It might be a good way to learn to talk to people, or just talk... Actually, just use Discord for that, join random servers and the voice chats.

Re: 25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer

#76

Post by detritus »

stainforth wrote: post #46
detritus wrote: post #9

I dearly wish I could have a Speech Recognition aspect to the 'creative' and CAD-like software I use - I think it would be fantastic to be able to do two or three operations 'at the same time' - eg. click an object with the mouse, hit ctrl on the keyboard to lock to some plain or angle, as I use the mouse to move, or whatever, whilst verbally instructing the software to 'zoom viewport out' or achieve whatever other f…

Just because this thread is dealing with user interaction in general, I do know there are also foot pedals people use as modifiers or input actions along the lines of what you're saying.

Thanks - I've played around with tertiary inputs a couple of times over the years, from MIDI-based level boards to a '3D' input device for CAD. The speech recognition would be, I think, ideal for function interactions harder to describe than that which a switch or a level could achieve - eg "Fill highlighted image with Red and make 50% transparent" or something.

The critical benefit would be to be able to do this whilst at the same time 'controlling' the focus with a mouse and keyboard at the same time.

Re: 25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer

#77

Post by mattcaldwell »

jefftk wrote: post #47

To avoid wrist pain, I have started dictating quite a lot as a way to enter large amounts of text into my laptop and phone. It's really very good, especially on android. Aside from the relatively large downside of it being noisy, I like it almost as much as I did typing.

Dictating is a much easier task, since it doesn't necessarily require comprehension.

Re: 25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer

#78

Post by josefresco »

Just this morning on my way to work: "Hey Siri, remind me to take my meds at lunch"

Siri created a reminder (good) called "Take my meds at lunch" - no time (bad), just a simple reminder.

I saw this post, looked at the time and wondered why Siri didn't remind me, given it was 1:00 - now I know to be more specific but in reality I'll just stop trying like most people.

Re: 25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer

#79

Post by toolslive »

Back in the days (80s) they were joking about the programming languages used in early (star trek) holodecks.

  > (1st attempt) "Computer! coffee please"
  > (computer dumps coffee on Kirk) "argh!"
  > (2nd attempt) "Computer! coffee in a mug please"
  > (3rd attempt) "Computer! hot coffee in a mug please"
  ....
  > (25th attempt) "Computer! 10cl of coffee at 50C with 3cl of fresh milk at 6C in a bottoms down ceramic mug of 15cl"
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