25 Years In Speech Technology and I still don’t talk to my computer • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by jefftk » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

mattcaldwell wrote: post #77

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.

Dictating in the sense of entering text, as one might dictate to a secretary. Definitely involving comprehension.

(For example, I dictated this reply)

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

#92

Post by smnrchrds » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #80

I'd like to go back in time and fire up Dragon Dictation and see how far we've came. The Pentium processor's power over the 486 was supposed to be the missing link to 'working' text to speech.

Please let me know of the results when you do. It unfortunately doesn't have a free trial.

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

#93

Post by LukeShu » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

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'm sorry, I couldn't find any results for ‘OK Google, begin navigation to Denver, Colorado.’”

“OK Google, what's the speed limit?” → “The speed limit is defined as the maximum rate at which a vehicle can legally travel on a given stretch of road.”

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

#94

Post by 542354234235 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

gxqoz wrote: post #64

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.

Do you find yourself going back and revising what you've dictated? When I type, I'm frequently pausing, going to other parts of the document, and deleting things I've already written. All of these actions I find more annoying when dictating. Not to mention some of the baffling Random capitalization Choices and, over/under insertion of punctuation. In general, I find dictation useful on my phone to take notes to mysel…

Just say "dictated but not read" at the end and leave all the mistakes in there. Problem solved.

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

#95

Post by WalterSear » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

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…

Most of the time when I ask that at home, it tells me that it's afraid it can't turn off the lights, since they are already off.

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

#96

Post by perryizgr8 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

gpm wrote: post #69

onion2k wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would quickly change if people actually wanted to do it though. Social norms are just unwritten agreements - if enough people decide to dictate their novels and blog posts in coffeeshops then the default will quickly change so talking is acceptable.

I think you underestimate the resistance. The problem isn't just that people don't want to do it, it's also that people don't want other people to do it because it's annoying. It might pass in a coffee shop, it probably won't in an airplane, it will almost certainly never pass in a library. People will try it regardless of the appropriateness of the location, because some people aren't aware or are assholes, and as a…

People talk to each other all the time in coffee shops. If talking to your computer becomes as natural as talking to a friend, why won't it be acceptable in a shop?

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

#97

Post by jefftk » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

gxqoz wrote: post #64

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.

Do you find yourself going back and revising what you've dictated? When I type, I'm frequently pausing, going to other parts of the document, and deleting things I've already written. All of these actions I find more annoying when dictating. Not to mention some of the baffling Random capitalization Choices and, over/under insertion of punctuation. In general, I find dictation useful on my phone to take notes to mysel…

I do need to go back and fix problems, such as poor handling of punctuation on android and poor handling of capitalization on Mac. Fixing a few things is much less work on my wrists than typing the whole thing out, however, so I'm still much happier with speech to text.

At this point I'm dictating even my (work) design docs and (personal) blog posts. I do think I'm a bit less fluent when using speech to text, because it's harder for me to jump around and make slight word choice improvements, but not by much?

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

#98

Post by jowsie » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

himinlomax wrote: post #34

wolco2 wrote: post #21

The problem is we (as in hn) can type faster than we can think of the words to describe. My wife always talks to google. It seems backwards to me. Next generation should skip speaking and wireless read thoughts. Language/speaking is a bottleneck.

Good point. I never use speech commands for the same reason I don't use handwriting recognition. I just hate hand writing, typing is my default mode of operating a machine. I can't play with a joystick either, come to think about it.

Comparing creative work to turning on a lamp or checking the weather doesn't seem quite right to me

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

#99

Post by iandanforth » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

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…

Because this is HN, I want to say that I think the above is now doable and more people should be working on startups in this space.

The thing we're discovering is how to marry NLP (which works pretty well) with structured databases and automated tools (which work really really well).

A pure AI play probably won't get this done. But if your AI starts knowing how to use information tools then I think we'll see a lot of near term progress.

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

#100

Post by jefftk » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

542354234235 wrote: post #94

gxqoz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find yourself going back and revising what you've dictated? When I type, I'm frequently pausing, going to other parts of the document, and deleting things I've already written. All of these actions I find more annoying when dictating. Not to mention some of the baffling Random capitalization Choices and, over/under insertion of punctuation. In general, I find dictation useful on my phone to take notes to mysel…

Just say "dictated but not read" at the end and leave all the mistakes in there. Problem solved.

I expect you're joking, but in case you're not I would consider that very rude in almost any situation. I don't always catch all of my mistakes, but I definitely read over and check for them.