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I remember back in ~93, my dad told me that the Mac we had just bought had voice recognition. He warned me -- quite jokingly -- that he had to be careful not to

I remember back in ~93, my dad told me that the Mac we had just bought had voice recognition. He warned me -- quite jokingly -- that he had to be careful not to say something like, "mynameisash, please empty the trash" because the computer might hear it and mistakenly delete items in the trash. Almost 30 years later, how many orders of magnitude faster silicon and countless person-hours of research and I can't get my damn phone (which, yes, _is_ a marvel that way-back-when-me wouldn't believe) to recognize, "call mrs_mynameisash" when I'm using my hands-free while driving. I don't know how many times Google's voice assistant has called some (possibly local?) T-Mobile instead. And my wife's name sounds nothing like "T-Mobile".

inetknght 6y ago
> I remember back in ~93 I remember, when I was a wee little lad back in '96, playing on an old Mac Plus with a black and white screen. Even then we had software installed that would let us control the old Mac Plus with our voice. It was the first time I'd ever used a boom microphone. Here, go reminisce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk My dad insisted that a boom microphone was required -- not just any microphone but a "boom" microphone specifically. It was interesting when I showed him some smaller microphones years later that worked better with less noise. Oh man have I grown since. Hardware and processing power have both grown so much. But speech recognition is still as dumb (or even dumber) as it was 30 years ago. It certainly didn't need the internet to work back then!
three14 6y ago
Since half this thread gives workarounds, and since I had the same problem, I'll share my workaround: you can tell Google that a particular contact is your wife. There's a "relationship" field in contacts. Now I can say "call my wife" and it mostly works, although saying her name is still hopeless.
FabHK 6y ago
One of the funniest video on YouTube in my opinion is this 2007 demonstration of voice recognition on Windows Vista for Perl programming. The lad spends the first 4.5 minutes trying to enter „open (INFO“ before typing it out. Absolute classic. „Thank you... delete thank you“ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec

inetknght 6y ago

> I remember back in ~93 I remember, when I was a wee little lad back in '96, playing on an old Mac Plus with a black and white screen. Even then we had software installed that would let us control the old Mac Plus with our voice. It was the first time I'd ever used a boom microphone. Here, go reminisce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk My dad insisted that a boom microphone was required -- not just any microphone but a "boom" microphone specifically. It was interesting when I showed him some smaller microphones years later that worked better with less noise. Oh man have I grown since. Hardware and processing power have both grown so much. But speech recognition is still as dumb (or even dumber) as it was 30 years ago. It certainly didn't need the internet to work back then!

three14 6y ago

Since half this thread gives workarounds, and since I had the same problem, I'll share my workaround: you can tell Google that a particular contact is your wife. There's a "relationship" field in contacts. Now I can say "call my wife" and it mostly works, although saying her name is still hopeless.

FabHK 6y ago

One of the funniest video on YouTube in my opinion is this 2007 demonstration of voice recognition on Windows Vista for Perl programming. The lad spends the first 4.5 minutes trying to enter „open (INFO“ before typing it out. Absolute classic. „Thank you... delete thank you“ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec