3 ms·

I'm not super deep into the world to NLP, but from what I have kept up with, it seems that the state-of-the-art is almost constantly open-sourced. I understand

I'm not super deep into the world to NLP, but from what I have kept up with, it seems that the state-of-the-art is almost constantly open-sourced. I understand certain companies have personal relationships already built which may be what MS is after more so than the IP, but isn't there a "canonical" way of building a, for example, speech to text system for your phone? Is there really a lot of NLP IP hidden behind corporate walls at this point? I just assumed Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, etc were all using the same model architectures. Genuine question, can anyone shed some light?

gogopuppygogo 5y ago
The hardest part of running a 10 mile marathon for most people is the last mile. Lots of amazing open source out there but the difference between 90% accuracy and 99.7% accuracy can be very difficult to obtain. Not to mention, quantified data sets, especially medical ones, can hold immense value.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
I recently went through a ton of speech to text engines to test them. There are a lot of open source research projects as well as paid products, including amazon and google's paid products, which I assumed would be paying for the best of the best. Dragon (nuance's products) blew them out of the water in my experience. I was very surprised. Sentence error rate is still pretty shit across the board, so tiny improvements still make a massive difference in usability.
- raobit 5y ago
  is Dragon really used in large scale enterprise, unlike siri,alexa for home automation, but i am hearing dragon let alone nuance famous for its AI product for the first time
- ionwake 5y ago
  There is only one English "conversational" voice that I see ( which seems to be the best). Is there a way to make the others "conversational" if not, is Zoe the best example? Did you find any competing product that came close? Thank you
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
    I’m referring to the speech to text product. What’s the Zoe thing?
    - ionwake 5y ago
      Oh its one of the TTS voices
iudqnolq 5y ago
Absolutely. Take a look at [this list][gov-uk-list] of free alternatives to Dragon. The only good free alternatives they list are the closed source ones built-in to Windows and Mac. Or have a look at [this announcement][nvda-announcement] touting open-source work to integrate closed-source voice recognition engines with an otherwise open-source piece of accessibility software. gov-uk-list: https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2018/09/27/assistive-technology-tools-you-can-use-at-no-cost/ https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2018/09/27/assistive-techn... nvda-announcement: https://www.afb.org/aw/19/4/15104 https://www.afb.org/aw/19/4/15104

gogopuppygogo 5y ago

The hardest part of running a 10 mile marathon for most people is the last mile. Lots of amazing open source out there but the difference between 90% accuracy and 99.7% accuracy can be very difficult to obtain. Not to mention, quantified data sets, especially medical ones, can hold immense value.

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

I recently went through a ton of speech to text engines to test them. There are a lot of open source research projects as well as paid products, including amazon and google's paid products, which I assumed would be paying for the best of the best. Dragon (nuance's products) blew them out of the water in my experience. I was very surprised. Sentence error rate is still pretty shit across the board, so tiny improvements still make a massive difference in usability.

raobit 5y ago
is Dragon really used in large scale enterprise, unlike siri,alexa for home automation, but i am hearing dragon let alone nuance famous for its AI product for the first time
ionwake 5y ago
There is only one English "conversational" voice that I see ( which seems to be the best). Is there a way to make the others "conversational" if not, is Zoe the best example? Did you find any competing product that came close? Thank you
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  I’m referring to the speech to text product. What’s the Zoe thing?
  - ionwake 5y ago
    Oh its one of the TTS voices

iudqnolq 5y ago

Absolutely. Take a look at [this list][gov-uk-list] of free alternatives to Dragon. The only good free alternatives they list are the closed source ones built-in to Windows and Mac. Or have a look at [this announcement][nvda-announcement] touting open-source work to integrate closed-source voice recognition engines with an otherwise open-source piece of accessibility software. gov-uk-list: https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2018/09/27/assistive-technology-tools-you-can-use-at-no-cost/ https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2018/09/27/assistive-techn... nvda-announcement: https://www.afb.org/aw/19/4/15104 https://www.afb.org/aw/19/4/15104