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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

#141

Post by oftenwrong »

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.

I still often use a phone call (or sms) for takeaway. It's faster than using an app or website if you already know what you want, and usually cheaper, since there is no middle-man.

For delivery, I agree. It is easier and faster to use a service, since my address and payment information are already saved.

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

#142

Post by arkh »

codeulike wrote: post #29
Swizec wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Alexa, play punk rock” “Playing ” “Alexa stop. Alexa play punk rock playlist” “Cannot find punk rock playlist” “Alexa play punk rock 00’s playlist” “Can’t find” “Alexa play early 2000’s punk rock” “Playing punk rock 00’s playlist” It’s like she’s trying to mock me.

Burglar: "Put your hands up and show me where the money is, I won't hurt you..." Me: "Alright man, I'll tell you where is money ... ALEXA CALL THE POLICE!" Alexa: "Shuffling songs by The Police" * EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE plays as I get punched 24 times * from https://twitter.com/ppathole/status/1092034892249079813

Even if it works: do you expect the police to stop the burglar before they shoot you?

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

#143

Post by mikestew »

nottorp wrote: post #135
heleninboodler wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 me…

Ouch. I just did a quickie test asking Siri to set me a reminder for 'tomorrow at eighteen'. No dice. It set it for 8 am. It doesn't even support 24 hour time - at least in English.

"...set an alarm for tomorrow @ eighteen hundred." works just fine. At least in U. S. English, I don't think I've ever heard anyone refer to 6 p. m. as "eighteen".

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

#144

Post by frankosaurus »

For me, the thing that killed voice commands had nothing to do with speech technology. It was latency and error handling.

At the start of my morning commute, I would say, "Ok Google, navigate to work".

Often, this would fail because I was in the network limbo area outside my house, where my phone struggles to transition from home WiFi to data.

Worst of all: The failure would be horribly slow. I would have to drive for another 30s before my phone realized, yes, we are really out of WiFi range now. And the voice command wouldn't be auto-retried. I would have to tell my phone again. It didn't remember.

I added one-touch "Home" and "Work" Google Maps widgets to my home screen and never looked back.

As an engineer, I realize why this is a tricky problem. As a consumer, I want it to "just work".

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

#145

Post by dyingkneepad »

LukeShu wrote: post #93
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.”

"The speed limit is 299792458 metres per second, also known as the Speed of Light."

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

#146

Post by Causality1 »

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…

Try getting Google to voice type the word "o'clock". Just try it.

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

#147

Post by wongarsu »

arkh wrote: post #142
codeulike wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burglar: "Put your hands up and show me where the money is, I won't hurt you..." Me: "Alright man, I'll tell you where is money ... ALEXA CALL THE POLICE!" Alexa: "Shuffling songs by The Police" * EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE plays as I get punched 24 times * from https://twitter.com/ppathole/status/1092034892249079813

Even if it works: do you expect the police to stop the burglar before they shoot you?

I don't expect a burglar to shoot me. Raising the charge from breaking and entering to armed robbery is dumb enough, raising it to murder is downright stupid.

Drug addiction makes people do crazy things, but there's a reason why most burglars flee as soon as they are noticed

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

#148

Post by XCSme »

toolslive wrote: post #79

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…

This means that you whould only be able to choose between several (discrete) choices instead of assigning the computer random tasks. But when the number of such choices is really small (eg. make coffee), then a simple physical button to initiate the task is better in almost every way.

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

#149

Post by teddyh »

tjungblut wrote: post #115
mikestew wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mon…

What I find even worse is when you play FIFA and some random non-related british commentary triggers the "xbox" speech command. Infuriating, especially since you can't turn it off.

And it can be used to troll people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anslUJ5SCIs

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

#150

Post by ryandrake »

PeterisP wrote: post #137
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.

GUIs won over console workflows because GUIs have better discoverability and the "recall vs recognize" difference; it's mentally much easier to recognize the option you want when presented it than to recall the existence or the naming of that option. In those aspects of UX, voice interfaces have the same drawbacks as console apps when compared to a good GUI. Also, they have to work within the "bandwidth bottleneck" o…

> Also, they have to work within the "bandwidth bottleneck" of audio - just imagine a phone system that tells you all the options you have, "Press 1 for something, Press 2 for another thing..." - they are so annoying because they are slow and inherently linear

They're even slower now because the brain trust decided adding voice control to the phone menu system was a great idea. So before, it said "For prescription refills, press 1." Now I have to wait for "For prescription refills, press 1, or say prescription refills." How on earth does that improve anything? I can just as easily press 1 as I can say a word, and when I press 1, there is a near 100% chance that the computer on the other end will understand my command.

Some phone menu voice automation are even worse. "Tell me what you want! " Then you say something, and it says "I didn't recognize that. Please tell me what you want!" Then it fails again and says "I didn't recognize that. For prescription refills, press 1, or say prescription refills..." Oh great so there was a menu? Why did you waste my time earlier?

Voice is just a terrible, low-fidelity, low-bandwidth way of commanding a computer. You might as well have handwriting input while you're at it: You write what you want on a piece of paper, and hold it up to the camera and the computer tries to figure out what you wrote. Just as silly.

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