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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

#81

Post by pessimizer »

sixothree wrote: post #22
KorematsuFred wrote: post #2

Very unlikely I will ever talk to my computer irrespective of how good the speed technology gets. If I have to talk to my computer how will I work in crowded places ? How does it work ?

Even at home without any risk of disturbing coworkers, it would have to be extremely intuitive to offer any speed advantage. I can open Microsoft Word faster than I can say "open microsoft word". It would have to be smart enough to short circuit the entire process of doing something useful with Word.

You're not thinking creatively enough. Part of the technology would be to disable any other way of opening Word.

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

#82

Post by tasty_freeze »

I always type at my computer, and 90% of the time use voice dictation on my phone because I don't text enough to be good at it.

Google's voice capture often astonishes me with its accuracy, and nearly as often makes me laugh at how bad it can get things.

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

#83

Post by pessimizer »

gpm wrote: post #3
KorematsuFred wrote: post #2

Very unlikely I will ever talk to my computer irrespective of how good the speed technology gets. If I have to talk to my computer how will I work in crowded places ? How does it work ?

Wear some sort of sound containing bubble around your head, fits in nicely with the whole pandemic thing :)

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=stenomask&ia=images&iax=images

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

#85

Post by munchbunny »

hirako2000 wrote: post #30
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…

But your examples are way harder than they sound. Speech or non speech analysers have a hard time with context. What do you mean by "recent" photos. And what percentage? Of people wearing mask in each photo, or of 1 or more people with a mask in the whole set of photos? Or the percentage of photo having all people wearing a mask. We humans make a lot of deduction from context. We haven't been able to teach computers…

But your examples are way harder than they sound.

There are two ways to look at this problem: (1) what is hard and what is easy for our current tech to do, and (2) what are the things that humans actually want to pawn off to assistants?

The problem is that those are two very different answers. I don't think I agree with the grandparent comment that some of those things should be easy, but I do think that comment contains good examples of the level of sophistication that would make an AI assistant more than just a curiosity for the couple times each day you prefer not to hit the button yourself (or if you listen to the radio while you shower).

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

#86

Post by fmeyer »

My first experience with conversational tech was using IBM's via voice 98. I still speak with these modern assistants in the same spaced pace.

I was surprised by google meet transcription system, which to me, it's the most accurate I've used so far. Same with the google docs dictation.

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

#87

Post by Godel_unicode »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #72
ketzo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's just not true, though. As with many console things, multi-tasking is totally possible but it's discoverability is terrible. Ctrl+z and `jobs` is the entry level, with tmux being the end-state reached via gnu screen. This lack of discoverability is the same problem voice assistants have only moreso; no `apropos` and no tab completion.

GUIs are for discovery, CLIs are for power via composability, voice/NLP assistants are for convenience.

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

#88

Post by dheera »

Spooky23 wrote: post #43
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…

I think the issue is that the virtual assistant is there to assist, not replace an assistant. I have an admin. I can text, call, talk, email her and say “let’s get bob, mary and finance on the phone at 4” and she’ll move stuff around to make sure that happens. I can also delegate complex administrative tasks that need to be done in my name. When I’m at the dentist, I usually do a “hey Siri” to book it as it saves tim…

Maybe it's the marketing.

I don't have a human assistant, but if I did, the biggest things I would expect from them isn't about scheduling a meeting or scheduling a barber appointment. I can handle that stuff myself.

What I would REALLY expect of a human assistant:

"Can you call up my health insurance and fight this stupid bill of $400 for COVID testing that should have been $0. Please escalate if necessary. Thanks."

"Can you figure out how to fight this red light ticket that I got due to a malfunctioning red light camera? Thanks."

"Can you fight this parking ticket? I had a valid permit to park there, and here's documentation of that. Thanks."

"Can you register me to vote? Here's my ID. Thanks. Make sure they don't sign me up for spam."

"Can you call up Comcast and fight this bill increase? Threaten to switch to another provider if necessary, I heard that works."

"Can you call up this company that posted my personal information and ask them to remove it? If they refuse, threaten legal action."

"Can you dispute this electric bill for me? My heating shouldn't have been $400 a month. Something must be wrong with my meter or someone is leeching power from my line."

"Can you call up the 10 different grocery stores in the area and figure out which one has X in stock?"

In all honesty I do wish the Google automated assistant could do all of the above. Sorry Pichai, I don't care for scheduling haircuts automatically. I want your assistant to use its hundreds of thousands of hours of human conversations and use machine learning to craft and engineer responses to humans to know EXACTLY when to escalate, EXACTLY when to ask for a manager, HOW to threaten legal action, and basically fight tooth-and-nail with language to get me what I want against the companies and institutions I need to fight with on the phone. The job of an "assistant" should be to get sh*t done and get me what I want. Use machine learning and lots of data to master the art of negotiation with customer service reps.

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

#89

Post by SubiculumCode »

I always thought it was a bit dumb for Google to name their voice assistant 'Google'. First you cannot ever upgrade the name, its THE name. Second, every time the assistant screws up, Google gets the blame directly tied to their name.

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

#90

Post by heleninboodler »

jkaptur wrote: post #13
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…

> 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.

It's funny, but for years I've felt like "Hey Siri, set an alarm for 7am" was 1000x easier than using the clunky Clock UI and it's almost exclusively what I use Siri for. Tasks that are so perfectly well-defined are exactly what this "smart" tech is useful for. Except that recently, Siri screwed me. I said "hey Siri, set an alarm for 6:30am" and her response was "Ok, your 6:30am alarm is on," but what she actually meant was "Ok, I ensured that your standing alarm for every tuesday at 6:30am is on" which meant she wasn't enabling the alarm for 6:30am tomorrow, so I overslept. Very annoying and completely blew my trust in a very useful function.
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