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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

#281

Post by joubert »

dheera wrote: post #226
dragonwriter wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The correct title for Californians is "The 5". You have omitted the rather important qualifier “Southern” from your description, as that usage is a key differentiator between Northern and Southern California.

I live in the bay area and everyone I know calls it "I-5". "Everyone I know" of course could be biased though as most of my circle did not grow up in California.

“In Southern California, the definite article “the” gets placed before just about every freeway or highway, whereas in the Bay Area just the numbers are said.”

— https://www.kcbx.org/post/how-you-refer-us-101-says-lot-abou...

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

#282

Post by pbhjpbhj »

airstrike wrote: post #123
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.

The only two questions I ever ask Siri are "how cold is it outside?" and "wake me up {at HHam, in X minutes}"

I'm curious that you want to know the temperature specifically, rather than the weather. I'm guessing that's for reasons other than clothing choice?

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

#283

Post by pbhjpbhj »

martyvis wrote: post #214
bserge wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other day, I wanted it to open an app and start recording when I say "Hey Google, take a voice note"... but no dice :/

Just say "Hey Google, open Live Transcribe" (assuming you had that app installed)

This highlights part of the problem. Google sell/advertise products for companies but people want to use tools.

People want "[wake word], [action] [modifiers]".

Companies want "[trademark product] [trademark product] [modifiers]" (eg the parents example "Hey Google (RTM), Live Transcribe (RTM) 'words to transcribe'").

I've only used Alexa (and only for fun) but the replacement of verbs with companies/products, and of nouns with proper nouns, is really annoying to me and gets in the way IMO.

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

#284

Post by zerop »

nottorp wrote: post #139
zerop wrote: post #10

There are good use cases apart from Dictation for Speech tech: 1. Voice based operations in factories, construction workers who want to have both the hands free but want to navigate via a device 2. Use cases while Driving. E.g. A Driver who is delivering goods. 3. Call centre - Analytics of audio calls etc. Can have many use cases 4. Voice assistant like Alexa, Siri. Mind that Alexa, Siri have vision to do more than…

> 1. Voice based operations in factories, construction workers who want to have both the hands free but want to navigate via a device They can't understand speech properly in a quiet environment, and you want them to get your commands on a factory floor or construction site? :)

Google/YouTube - voice picking in warehouses.. there are products built for this.

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

#285

Post by pbhjpbhj »

maneesh wrote: post #270
GloriousKoji wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri doesn't get the weather right. "What's the weather in Yosemite" and "Yosemite weather" can get you two drastically different results. As of right now (10/26/2020 10:35 AM) the two results I get are 43F and 32F.

Siri is always mistaken. Alexa is pretty good.

Alexa is super easy to make a skill for (IIRC it's one XML/JSON file hosted somewhere and registered with Amazon). So you could probably make your own with ~IFTTT to scrape the data. Alexa has "daily briefing" which will then go through a list of skills which can include your own [public] skills.

I made an "and finally ..." to add funny news to the end of the daily briefing and was super impressed how easy it was.

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

#286

Post by pbhjpbhj »

btown wrote: post #160
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…

Something I'd love to see is a move towards "multiple possibilities" in voice-based UI/UX. Almost all these systems give weighted probabilities to different parses, and if you gave the human a choice between the top 3, you could be much more exploratory/risk-taking in choosing candidates. Or in machine translation or transcription, why do Google Translate and YouTube automatic captioning not communicate the system's…

Agreed, "recent photos" should get a response like "showing photos from the last day" and you can say "no, from the last month" and that then will be used to weight similar requests (about photos) in the future (weight mind you, not naively then make all requests for 'recent' by replaced by '1 month').

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

#288

Post by psysharp »

I don’t know what speech tech will be good for, probably a lot of things, but typing I think will remain as the preferred mode of communication indefinitely. It is already the more sophisticated approach. Using speech is kind of trying to use a new kind of paint that only works on paper to also work on cave walls. Nevertheless we might discover something in the process.

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

#289

Post by jasonv »

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 set up a routine for the words "Music Time" on my Alexa. Every day I say those words a few times. The hit rate on an accurate response is not above 90%.

It's the only thing I use my Alexa for.

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

#290

Post by athms »

dheera wrote: post #226
dragonwriter wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The correct title for Californians is "The 5". You have omitted the rather important qualifier “Southern” from your description, as that usage is a key differentiator between Northern and Southern California.

I live in the bay area and everyone I know calls it "I-5". "Everyone I know" of course could be biased though as most of my circle did not grow up in California.

I lived in Southern California (Orange County) in the 70s and 80s. We called I-5 the 5. Same for the 405, the 101, the 15, the 10, the 99. Also, we called State Route 1 (aka Highway 1) PCH no matter where it was located in the state, even though SR1 only has the Pacific Coast Highway designation between Oxnard and Dana Point.

I moved to Northern California (Santa Clara County) in the late 80s and I still use the same monikers. If I take a trip to Big Sur, I tell folks I am going to take the 17 to PCH and drive down. Old habits die hard.

https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/the-5-the-101-the-405-why...

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