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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

#191

Post by jaclaz »

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? :)

Navigating a menu (with a limited set of choices) could be actually useful, and - given the limited amount of "valid" commands - it should be possible to overcome/filter background noise.

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

#192

Post by irrational »

ineedasername wrote: post #162
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…

On your searches: 1) I get the correct response; Assistant first asks me if I want to use "air check", I say yes, and get the correct response. 2) I get appropriate responses when I ask "What is the closest gas station to Mt. Shasta." Because the approaches are mostly from Rt. 5, you'll have no problem getting a usable response. Another approach from Rt 89 exists, so I don't know how you expect Google to know which "…

Rt. 5? Do you mean I-5? I'm curious if using "Rt." instead of "I-" is a regional thing. Where are you located? Typically Rt. would only be used for a small state road, not a major interstate highway.

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

#193

Post by jldugger »

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…

The problem, as you note, is that you are actually doing more parsing of the input than virtual assistants do. Tom Scott has some good videos on the subject (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3vIEKWrP9Q&list=PL96C35uN7x...)

To give a more concrete example, here's a UPenn demo (https://cogcomp.seas.upenn.edu/page/demo_view/ShallowParse) for your instagram query:

> NP What percentage PP of NP people can NP you VP detect to be wearing NP masks PP on NP recent Instagram photos VP tagged PP at NP a location PP within NP a 10 mile radius PP of NP Mt. Shasta ?

Part of the reason we don't progress beyond that is that speech recognition like in the OP article is quite bad: 95 percent accuracy is considered "good." But it means we expect 1-2 words of your query to be misrecognized, so even if it did parse the query as you proposed, it would probably be answering the wrong question!

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

#194

Post by Snitch-Thursday »

ryandrake wrote: post #150
PeterisP wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

> 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.

Ironically I used to love me some graffiti on PalmOS and Google Handwriting Input on my Droid 2, but I agree with the spirit of your comment.

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

#195

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ufmace wrote: post #181
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Your assistant is probably smart enough to remember what kind of pizza you like and from where, and will just order that unless you tell them something else. In theory, there's no reason your phone auto-assistant couldn't do the same thing, but we seem to be a long way from any of them having that level of intelligence.

Exactly! We aren't there yet technologically, but I think it's a worthy goal.

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

#196

Post by krrrh »

tschwimmer wrote: post #169
jjoonathan wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and that wouldn't be a problem if the discovery story wasn't dismal or the browsing story wasn't dismal, but it definitely is. On both counts.

Discovery and browsing are not good on the assistant interface but I'd argue that's a constraint of voice vs visual. On a desktop/mobile, the screen holds the state so you can go back to previous entries, etc. Over voice, you mind holds the state which scales much much worse.

To the credit of the Shortcuts team at Apple, being able to visually select and define certain phrases for commonly completed tasks is helpful in this regard, but I’d guess only a couple % of the user base is even aware that Siri Shortcuts are possible.

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

#197

Post by bigbonch »

ineedasername wrote: post #162
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…

On your searches: 1) I get the correct response; Assistant first asks me if I want to use "air check", I say yes, and get the correct response. 2) I get appropriate responses when I ask "What is the closest gas station to Mt. Shasta." Because the approaches are mostly from Rt. 5, you'll have no problem getting a usable response. Another approach from Rt 89 exists, so I don't know how you expect Google to know which "…

This mindset is exactly why these assistants are bad. Start with the UX then work backwards from there and make it happen.

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

#199

Post by ineedasername »

bigbonch wrote: post #197
ineedasername wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On your searches: 1) I get the correct response; Assistant first asks me if I want to use "air check", I say yes, and get the correct response. 2) I get appropriate responses when I ask "What is the closest gas station to Mt. Shasta." Because the approaches are mostly from Rt. 5, you'll have no problem getting a usable response. Another approach from Rt 89 exists, so I don't know how you expect Google to know which "…

This mindset is exactly why these assistants are bad. Start with the UX then work backwards from there and make it happen.

No. Asking a question in an unambiguous way is not a requirement that can be done away with. It can't be done in many normal text-based searches, it can't be done in face-to-face conversations with real people, so there should be no expectation that a voice search would yield any better results. Having actual data that exists to answer the question, as with the mask example, is also an essential requirement.

If you expect more, than your problem does not lie with voice assistants, it lies with search technology itself. "Expecting" these questions to be answerable is unrealistic given current capabilities. Working backwards from the UX would produce nothing better because your expectations are thwarted not by poor design, but by the limits of state of the art technology.

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

#200

Post by ineedasername »

irrational wrote: post #192
ineedasername wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On your searches: 1) I get the correct response; Assistant first asks me if I want to use "air check", I say yes, and get the correct response. 2) I get appropriate responses when I ask "What is the closest gas station to Mt. Shasta." Because the approaches are mostly from Rt. 5, you'll have no problem getting a usable response. Another approach from Rt 89 exists, so I don't know how you expect Google to know which "…

Rt. 5? Do you mean I-5? I'm curious if using "Rt." instead of "I-" is a regional thing. Where are you located? Typically Rt. would only be used for a small state road, not a major interstate highway.

It's used interchangeably for the number of any road, at least in my experience. It certainly gave appropriate responses when I tested it out.
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