The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition • Hacker News Board

Re: The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition

#71

Post by seidleroni » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #40

vertnerd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also been working on half a dozen crates of old family letters. ChatGPT does well with them and is especially good at summarizing the letters. Unfortunately, all the output still has to be verified because it hallucinates words and phrases and drops lines here and there. So at this point, I still transcribe them by hand, because the verification process is actually more tiresome than just typing them up in the f…

It helps when you can see the confidence of each token, which downloadable weights usually gives you. Then whenever you (your software) detects a low confidence token, run over that section multiple times to generate alternatives, and either go with the highest confidence one, or manually review the suggestions. Easier than having to manually transcribe those parts at least.

Is there any way to do this with the frontier LLM's?

Re: The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition

#72

Post by cubefox » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #6

Maybe for English, for the other human languages I use, it is still kind of hit and miss, just like speaking recognition, even with English it suffices to have an accent that is off the standard TV one.

Is "it" Gemini 3 Pro?

Re: The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition

#73

Post by throwup238 » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #68

benterix wrote: post #28

> If AI can diminish some of the monotony of research, perhaps we can spend more time thinking, writing, playing piano, and taking walks — with other people. Whenever any progress is made, this is the logical conclusion. And yet, those who decide about how your time is being used, have an opposing view.

If there is 1 job at a university. And there are 10 researchers applying. And 1 took this improvement in research speed to do more research, and 9 took the change to play more piano and take more walks, then most likely that one will get the job. This competitive nature is what has driven society forward and not kept us at just above subsistence agriculture.

> This competitive nature is what has driven society forward and not kept us at just above subsistence agriculture.

The UN estimates that around 500 million households or 2 billion people are still subsistence farmers. In 2025.

Fat lot of good competition has done them, especially when they don’t have enough surplus to participate in a market economy to begin with.

Re: The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition

#74

Post by palmotea » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:34 PM UTC

benterix wrote: post #28

> If AI can diminish some of the monotony of research, perhaps we can spend more time thinking, writing, playing piano, and taking walks — with other people. Whenever any progress is made, this is the logical conclusion. And yet, those who decide about how your time is being used, have an opposing view.

> Whenever any progress is made, this is the logical conclusion. And yet, those who decide about how your time is being used, have an opposing view.

Exactly. Some people forget we live in a capitalist society, which does not prioritize or support the contentment of the masses. We exist to work for the owners or starve, they're not going to pay us to enjoy ourselves.

Re: The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition

#75

Post by shevy-java » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

I can't recognize my handwriting anymore. :(

Re: The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition

#76

Post by dingnuts » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

palmotea wrote: post #74

benterix wrote: post #28

> If AI can diminish some of the monotony of research, perhaps we can spend more time thinking, writing, playing piano, and taking walks — with other people. Whenever any progress is made, this is the logical conclusion. And yet, those who decide about how your time is being used, have an opposing view.

> Whenever any progress is made, this is the logical conclusion. And yet, those who decide about how your time is being used, have an opposing view. Exactly. Some people forget we live in a capitalist society, which does not prioritize or support the contentment of the masses. We exist to work for the owners or starve, they're not going to pay us to enjoy ourselves.

[flagged]

Re: The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition

#77

Post by williamscales » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:41 PM UTC

girvo wrote: post #27

> "transmitted": In the second line of the body, the word "transmitted" is crossed out in the original text Am I nuts or is this wrong, not “perfect”? It doesn’t look crossed out at all to me in the image, just some bleeding? Still very impressive, of course

I agree, I noticed the same thing. To my eye it appears smudged.

Re: The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition

#78

Post by SoftTalker » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

MrSkelter wrote: post #16

coolness wrote: post #2

Great post and amazing progress in this field! However, I have to wonder if some of these letters were part of the training data for Gemini, since they are well-known and someone has probably already done the painstaking work of transcribing them...

I have a personal corpus of letters between my grandparents in WW2. My grandfather fighting in Europe and my grandmother in England. The ability of Claude and ChatGPT to transcribe them is extremely impressive. Though I haven’t worked on them in months and this uses older models. At that time neither system could properly organize pages though and chatGPT would sometimes skip a paragraph.

Always seemed strange to me that personal correspondence between two now-dead people is interesting. But I guess that is just my point of view. You could say the same thing about reading fiction, I guess.

Re: The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition

#79

Post by palmotea » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

volemo wrote: post #61

ulbu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe akin to how faster conputers bred programs that are slower than before.

Better “thinking” computers will breed worse thinking people, huh?

> Better “thinking” computers will breed worse thinking people, huh?

I actually think that will be the case. We're designing society for the technology, not the technology for the people in it. The human brain wasn't built to fit whatever gap is left by AI, regardless of how many words the technologists spew to claim otherwise.

For instance: AI already is undermining education by enabling mental laziness students (why learn the material when ChatGPT can do your homework for you). It seems the current argument is that AI will replace entry-level roles but leave space for experienced and skilled people (but block the path to get there). Some of the things LLMs do a mediocre but often acceptable job at are the things one needs to do to build and hone higher-level skills.

Re: The writing is on the wall for handwriting recognition

#80

Post by palmotea » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:48 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #76

palmotea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever any progress is made, this is the logical conclusion. And yet, those who decide about how your time is being used, have an opposing view. Exactly. Some people forget we live in a capitalist society, which does not prioritize or support the contentment of the masses. We exist to work for the owners or starve, they're not going to pay us to enjoy ourselves.

[flagged]

> shut the fuck up Marx, everyone is tired of you.

That's objectively false, but I understand. I too went through an obnoxious libertarian phase.

> nobody is forcing you to work for "the man," man.

You actually think that's true? Sure, no identifiable person is pointing a gun at our heads and shouting "work," but that's not the only form "forcing" can take.