Professor B: I think for two years we were two months , uh , away from being done .
PhD A: And what was that , Morgan ? What project ?
Professor B: Uh , the , uh , TORRENT chip .
PhD A: Oh .
Professor B: Yeah . We were two we were PhD C: Yeah .
Professor B: Uh , uh , we went through it Jim and I went through old emails at one point and and for two years there was this thing saying , yeah , we 're we 're two months away from being done . It was very very believable schedules , too . I mean , we went through and with the schedules and we PhD A: It was true for two years .
Professor B: Yeah . Oh , yeah . It was very true .
PhD A: So , should we just do the same kind of deal where we go around and do , uh , status report kind of things ? OK . And I guess when Sunil gets here he can do his last or something . So .
Professor B: Yeah . So we probably should wait for him to come before we do his .
PhD C: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: OK . That 's a good idea .
Professor B: Yeah .
Grad F: OK .
Professor B: Yeah .
PhD A: Any objection ? Do y OK , M
Professor B: All in favor
PhD A: Do you want to start , Morgan ? Do you have anything , or ?
Professor B: Uh , I don't do anything . I No , I mean , I I 'm involved in discussions with with people about what they 're doing , but I think they 're since they 're here , they can talk about it themselves .
Grad F: OK . So should I go so that , uh ,
PhD A: Yeah . Why don't you go ahead , Barry ?
Grad F: you 're gonna talk about Aurora stuff , per se ?
PhD A: OK .
Grad F: OK . Um . Well , this past week I 've just been , uh , getting down and dirty into writing my my proposal . So , um Mmm . I just finished a section on , uh on talking about these intermediate categories that I want to classify , um , as a as a middle step . And , um , I hope to hope to get this , um a full rough draft done by , uh , Monday so I can give it to Morgan .
PhD A: When is your , uh , meeting ?
Grad F: Um , my meeting
PhD A: Yeah .
Grad F: with , uh ? Oh , oh , you mean the the quals .
PhD A: The quals . Yeah .
Grad F: Uh , the quals are happening in July twenty - fifth .
PhD A: Oh . Soon .
Grad F: Yeah .
PhD A: Uh - huh .
Grad F: D - Day .
PhD A: Yeah .
Grad F: Uh - huh .
PhD A: So , is the idea you 're going to do this paper and then you pass it out to everybody ahead of time and ?
Grad F: Right , right . So , y you write up a proposal , and give it to people ahead of time , and you have a short presentation . And , um , and then , um then everybody asks you questions .
PhD A: Hmm .
Grad F: Yeah .
PhD A: I remember now .
Grad F: Yep . So , um .
PhD A: Have you d ? I was just gonna ask , do you want to say any a little bit about it ,
Grad F: Y s
PhD A: or ? Mmm .
Grad F: Oh . Uh , a little bit about ?
PhD A: Wh - what you 're what you 're gonna You said you were talking about the , uh , particular features that you were looking at ,
Grad F: Oh , the the PhD A: or Grad F: Right . Well , I was , um , I think one of the perplexing problems is , um , for a while I was thinking that I had to come up with a complete set of intermediate features in intermediate categories to to classify right away . But what I 'm thinking now is , I would start with with a reasonable set . Something something like , um , um like , uh , re regular phonetic features , just to just to start off that way . And do some phone recognition . Um , build a system that , uh , classifies these , um these feat uh , these intermediate categories using , uh , multi - band techniques . Combine them and do phon phoneme recognition . Look at then I would look at the errors produced in the phoneme recognition and say , OK , well , I could probably reduce the errors if I included this extra feature or this extra intermediate category . That would that would reduce certain confusions over other confusions . And then and then reiterate . Um , build the intermediate classifiers . Uh , do phoneme recognition . Look at the errors . And then postulate new or remove , um , intermediate categories . And then do it again .
PhD A: So you 're gonna use TIMIT ?
Grad F: Um , for that for that part of the the process , yeah , I would use TIMIT .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Grad F: And , um , then after after , uh , um , doing TIMIT . Right ?
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Grad F: Um , that 's  that 's , um that 's just the ph the phone recognition task .
PhD A: Yeah .
Grad F: Uh , I wanted to take a look at , um , things that I could model within word . So , I would mov I would then shift the focus to , um , something like Schw - Switchboard , uh , where I 'd I would be able to , um to model , um , intermediate categories that span across phonemes ,
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Grad F: not just within the phonemes , themselves , um , and then do the same process there , um , on on a large vocabulary task like Switchboard . Uh , and for that for that part I would I 'd use the SRI recognizer since it 's already set up for for Switchboard . And I 'd run some some sort of tandem - style processing with , uh , my intermediate classifiers .
PhD A: Oh . So that 's why you were interested in getting your own features into the SRI files .
Grad F: Yeah . That 's why I I was asking about that .
PhD A: Yeah . Yeah .
Grad F: Yeah . Um , and I guess that 's that 's it . Any any questions ?
PhD A: Sounds good . So you just have a few more weeks , huh ?
Grad F: Um , yeah . A few more .
PhD A: It 's about a month from now ?
Grad F: It 's a it 's a month and and a week .
PhD A: Yeah .
Grad F: Yeah .