Microsoft Can Understand Human Conversation Like a Human
October 31, 2016
I read “Microsoft Speech Recognition Technology Now Understands a Conversation As Well As a Person.” My wife’s Amazon Alexa does okay with her commands. I noted this passage in the write up:
This marks the first time that human parity has been reported for conversational speech.
Okay, I will inform my wife that Alexa is not able to do the speech recognition thing. She gave up on Microsoft Windows, laughed at the Windows phone I gave her, and bought a Mac laptop. She seems okay with what her iPhone 6 can do, but I will try again to explain that Microsoft really, really has solved a hard problem.
The write up points out:
In a paper published this week the Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research group said its speech recognition system had attained “human parity” and made fewer errors than a human professional transcriptionist.
Oh, not a product or a service she can test yet. The innovation is embodied in a paper. Is this content marketing or public relations? I suppose I could ask Cortana if we had a machine running that particular Microsoft invention. Windows 10 left us some time ago. Sorry.
The error rate of about six percent seems okay until you think about six words in 100 being incorrect. Some situatio0ns pivot on a single word, don’t they?
I will wait for the new system to be hooked up to Microsoft Tay. I remember Tay. The system learned some of the less savory aspects of language before the demonstration was sent back to the lab. The interaction of speech recognition and Tay will be something I want to test.
Maybe my wife will have a change of heart with regards to Apple and Amazon products.
Stephen E Arnold, October 31, 2016
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Microsoft Can Understand Human Conversation Like a Human : Stephen E. Arnold @ Beyond Search