Speaking from a Chinese context this is very common. The irony to me is that spoken Mandarin is very fast and very colloquial. This coupled with the limited num

Speaking from a Chinese context this is very common. The irony to me is that spoken Mandarin is very fast and very colloquial. This coupled with the limited number of phonemes makes it very easy to transcribe speech incorrectly (i.e. not inline with the speaker's intention). The irony is that I've observed that most Mandarin speakers will slow down their speech and speak more clearly to try and ensure proper transcription. This is amazing to me because most people I encounter don't do that for me, even though I am not a native speaker and by doing that they could ensure that our communication is smoother and more accurate. If we're looking at the rest of these anecdotal comments as a reflection of the larger English-speaking (and perhaps American) public, the conclusion is that speech-to-text isn't very helpful but in a completely different linguistic and cultural environment (i.e. Chinese) we see that it is indeed quite successful. One interesting thing to me is that, with sucessful enough voice-to-text transcription, the need for typing (and writing) becomes moot (in that context). I wonder if we'll see that typing as only a skill necessary for specific trades/occupations.