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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

#201

Post by canada_dry »

Catsandkites wrote: post #25

Question: Can I write my own assistant on mobile devices that is an actual assistant? As in, can listen for the key activation word in the background? Like the "official" assistants. As far as I can tell, the assistant APIs seem to be like plugins? On Android for example, it appears custom assistants still run through Google assistant. I want to be able to say "TriggerWord, do X and Y" and the OS activates my app, pa…

The custom home automation system I built relies on google's (very good) off-line voice recognition + automagic [i] + opencv face detection.

I did not want the home asst listening all the time - as it's highly likely to falsely trigger just listening to radio or tv it... so instead I use python+opencv to detect if the assistant (an old rooted samsung note) is being directly looked at - then it wakes up to listen for the trigger word and the command. Of course, I can also manually trigger it via any device in the house.

[i] http://automagic4android.com/

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

#202

Post by Dig1t »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #180
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 "…

I don’t believe he’s looking for a voice assistant. He’s in the market for Lieutenant Data.

Rather, I think he's looking for the shipboard computer in Star Trek. Which is actually an excellent example of the untapped potential that voice-based computing holds.

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

#203

Post by Dig1t »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #180
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 "…

I don’t believe he’s looking for a voice assistant. He’s in the market for Lieutenant Data.

[Commander] Data

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

#204

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

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 a regional thing. In New England, we call Interstate 95 "Route 95", Interstate 93 is "Route 93", etc. US Route 20 that stretches from Boston to Oregon is "Route 20". And both the US Route 3 that goes north from Boston through New Hampshire, and MA Route 3 that goes south from Boston down to Cape Cod are called "Route 3".

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

#205

Post by dragonwriter »

Dig1t wrote: post #203
matthewdgreen wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe he’s looking for a voice assistant. He’s in the market for Lieutenant Data.

[Commander] Data

Presumably, at some point Data, who was a Lieutenant Commander at the outset of TNG, was a Lieutenant. (This may even be the case in one of the novels in which he features set prior to TNG.)

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

#206

Post by nottorp »

mikestew wrote: post #185
shpx wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but you would still understand them if they did or take 5 seconds to ask a clarifying question.

I live in Redmond, WA. Frankly, if someone asked to meet for a meal at eighteen, I would assume they would like to get together in a Microsoft cafeteria closest to the (what I believe to be non-existent) Building 18. My backup option would be to assume that they have received a hard blow to the head at some point in their life. Again, whether I would understand them or not, no one to my knowledge speaks like that in…

I'm not English. We don't say eighteen hundred for 18:00, we say just eighteen. And I don't have localized Siri.

And in any case i said eighteen not eight a m.

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

#207

Post by parliament32 »

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.

..."at eighteen"? "Eighteen hundred hours" is how it's pronounced.

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

#208

Post by parliament32 »

wheybags wrote: post #157
frankosaurus wrote: post #144

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 fo…

Why would you need directions to the workplace you go to every day? Unless you're doing onsite stuff in new places every day?

Traffic.

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

#209

Post by elcomet »

ineedasername wrote: post #199
bigbonch wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

The three questions are completely answerable by a human. He might ask a bit more information though to answer correctly, which could also be expected of the device.

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

#210

Post by matthewdgreen »

Dig1t wrote: post #202
matthewdgreen wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe he’s looking for a voice assistant. He’s in the market for Lieutenant Data.

Rather, I think he's looking for the shipboard computer in Star Trek. Which is actually an excellent example of the untapped potential that voice-based computing holds.

The ship computer in Star Trek was always hilariously underpowered. They had to put an android on the bridge to operate manual controls during battle, for god’s sake.
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