From: eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: Re: Voice Recog. on Desktop
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 02:15:49 GMT

I sort of vowed to stop reading c.arch some time ago (little time, but
this thread caught on...).

In article <1992Apr15.175943.27200@das.harvard.edu> kehler@endor.uucp
(Andy Kehler) writes:
>In article <1992Apr15.150519.5356@sctc.com> smith@sctc.com
(Rick Smith) writes:
	I wrote (RhosettaStone):
>>>>I have yet to find a machine which can get pass the first test:
>>>>	How to recognize speech.     [1]
>>>>	How to wreck a nice beach.   [2]
>>
>>And markg@pdx077 (Mark Gonzales) replies:
>>
>>>This is a rather unfair test, most humans would have trouble
>>>distinguishing [1] from [2], especially without any conversational
>>>context.

Who said humans work fairly?  (See Ref.)
Hell, the Turing Test isn't "fair" in that case.  It's a test of
discrimination.  In some cirles these are crimes of impersonation,
forgery, etc.

>>Not so. Even the best speech recognition systems today
>>can't distinguish between the two when spoken at a normal
>>rate of speech, even when seen _in_ context.

One poster presented an example of a human who did not pass.
Probably in the right circumstances many of us could not pass.

>This may be so, but so what?  Practically speaking, how often are we
>going to encounter such an intense ambiguity?

You know for all of the posts in this thread so far generated, not one person
asked for a copy of the source to the RhosettaStone.  We are going to
encounter this ambiguity a lot.  How does the saying go?  Build a foolproof
system and we see how smart fools are?  Something like that.  I do not
provide the context for executing the benchmark.  You can certainly
embed the verbage into context dependent text.  My point was that the
SR community has become too mental, not hands on enough.  AI people has
lost a bit of empiricism.  This thread has proven my point. 8^)
It was fun bring it up.

BTW: the location of RhosettaStone is posted on the comp.benchmark FAQ
once a month.

>>My original post (in comp.arch, for those that remember) stated the
>>opinion that general purpose speech recognition isn't going to
>>be a turnkey application any time soon. Miya's example illustrates
>>it perfectly. Speech recognition is too knowledge intensive and
>>it rapidly becomes dependent on techniques that won't be able to
>>to solve the problem in real time. 
>
>I agree with most of this, except about Miya's well-known example.
>Miya describes this as the "first test", but it should be the last
>test.  There are many more realistic examples of deficiencies with
>speech recognition systems, ones that can be used as points of
>comparison between different systems for different applications.  Use
>of examples like the beach/speech one are inappropriate and
>short-sighted.  As with other software, 80% solutions may yield useful
>products.

It is only the first because it was the simplest, and it was the one
which got me thinking about the problem.  Easy to remember and test.
It's just a collection of text, lots of homonyms and other things like:
Ladle Rot Riding Hoot.  Much harder.  You are welcome to put
together "realistic" examples, but your audience should decided
the representativeness of realism.

>>Speech recognition can and will be used in applications with
>>severely restricted discourse, like single-word commands over
>>phone lines to answering machines, telemarketers, and such.
>>That's really different from a general purpose dictation system.

>Sure, but there is a large spectrum between single-word systems and
>full-blown, generic speech recognition.  How far along that spectrum
>we can get is the issue.

BTW: More examples, especially foreign language examples, appreciated.
Of course, let us not bash foreign languages.  Remember Perlis' epigram
on this: If your computer speaks English, it is probably Japanese. 8^)

At NASA we have people, not this Division, with a lot of interest
in speech (cockpit applications, I know Livermore is considering
nuclear reactor control), and on and on.  We willingly look at
interesting systems at the yearly Hackers Conference.  We will
gladily tear any system apart to understand how it works.  And have
fun doing it. 8^)

I don't read frequently, and only the Subject headers in this group.

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  Resident Cynic, Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers
  {uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
Ref: von Neumann and Morgenstein, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
Xref: sparky comp.arch:4999 comp.sys.dec:2556 alt.folklore.computers:6397