4 ms·

From memory, there was a time (end of millenium?) when using voice recognition to write documents was the next big thing. There was a pricey bit of software for

From memory, there was a time (end of millenium?) when using voice recognition to write documents was the next big thing. There was a pricey bit of software for Windows that was popular with power users and they would spend hours training it to their voice. Then it seemed to just die off. I don't think it was bad technology, because I don't think novelty value was enough to account for its popularity - you had to put hours in to get it to work well, it wasn't a casual toy. What's changed since then in terms of technology? Unless it's very significant, I suspect it will go the same way. Apart from an assistive technology viewpoint, my gut instinct is that it's not that satisfying or rewarding talking to a computer all day.

msaharia 4y ago
Dragon speech? I used it quite a bit 10 years ago!
kreddor 4y ago
It might have been Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I remember toying around with it 20 years ago or so. Apparently it has just been bought by Microsoft.
- tjixxu 4y ago
  I have good memories spending 4+ hours training Dragon to end up with what seemed like 30% accuracy.
bagels 4y ago
Many people dictate messages on their phones. Doctors use it extensively.
- towawy 4y ago
  Not a doctor, but I also started to using the dictation feature on my iPhone more and more recently. It's often more convenient than typing when I'm walking (which I do a lot) and the pickup of voice messaging, talking to your phone like it's a mic, made me more comfortable doing it in public.
arez 4y ago
one thing that changed that you can see in a demo, that it's speech recognition paired with a neural network. He doesn't have to say "write titanic = titanic.dropDuplicated()" he just says, "drop duplicates from titanic" so you "in theory" have to write less. It probably falls apart when you have more complex things to write and then you have to fallback to speaking it out word for word, but it is an interesting development
- xigoi 4y ago
  There is a reason we don't have many programming languages where you can say “drop duplicates from titanic”.
  - arez 4y ago
    what's the reason?
    - xigoi 4y ago
      Natural language is ambiguous and doesn't represent nested structures well.
  - tlb 4y ago
    Programming languages need to be unambiguous, but voice interfaces to them don't have to be. With a voice interface, you can say something vague, see what it gets translated into, and either click Run or edit it.
rommel917 4y ago
WFH become more common. You cant program with voice in office full of people who also program with voice. At home you can multytask work with voice while doing home stuff with hands. You just need projector do display on wall while you cook or assemble IKEA table.
- JW_00000 4y ago
  I cannot even concentrate on reading a text while the radio is playing; let alone programming while assembling furniture.
mmikeff 4y ago
I sometimes use voice recognition in Notes on my Mac to write up my meeting notes, but I find that my waffly speech results in very verbose notes. Also still quite a few mis-hears where I read my notes back later and have to work out what I was actually saying. Can I have transcription that can then turn my rambling into neat and concise prose?
junon 4y ago
Ah yes, Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Training for hours and hours and getting incredibly subpar results. It was a fun toy but there's a reason it didn't really take off in corporate settings.
- tecleandor 4y ago
  Dragon NaturallySpeaking is still alive at least in medical practice. Its Nuance Dragon Medical One product is fairly popular in some regions for medical report dictation as radiologists don't like to write them down (sorry ;) ). I've seen a Philips product in that field too. Seems like LG's TVs used their recognition engine for a while (don't know if that's still valid) The story for the most mainstream-popular dictation softwares is kind of funny. Back in the late 90's there was Dragon NaturallySpeaking and IBM's ViaVoice. In early 00s, after a financial fraud and bankruptcy involving both the then current Dragon owners and Goldman Sachs, they got bought by Scansoft. Scansoft bought Nuance, began to use its name, and then got exclusive rights for ViaVoice (!) from IBM. Now, in March this year, Nuance has been acquire by Microsoft.
  - junon 4y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know the history there! Just remember playing with it as a kid :)
- Aeolun 4y ago
  The best recognition rates on the words ‘scratch that’, which you used every other sentence.
mjochim 4y ago
> What's changed since then in terms of technology? Unless it's very significant, I suspect it will go the same way. Apart from an assistive technology viewpoint, my gut instinct is that it's not that satisfying or rewarding talking to a computer all day. Training data is now abundant compared to twenty years ago, and so is computation power. That means training can be much more complex now. The underlying technology is now typically neural networks (broadly speaking), whereas twenty years ago it might have been Hidden Markov Models. Overall, recognition quality, even without speaker-specific training, is now on a very different level than back then. Whether it’s considered good is a matter of opinion. But it’s significantly better than twenty years ago.
Double_a_92 4y ago
Isn't that a very niche application simply because it's voice-based? I.e. it can only be used if you are alone in an office, otherwise you would be annoying your coworkers and the voices would get mixed up.
Aeolun 4y ago
The only time I’ve ever successfully used voice recognition was teaching skyrim to recognize my words of power. Shouting fus-roh-dah ! was incredibly satisfying.
Closi 4y ago
> What's changed since then in terms of technology? Unless it's very significant, I suspect it will go the same way. Apart from an assistive technology viewpoint, my gut instinct is that it's not that satisfying or rewarding talking to a computer all day. It's hugely significant - look at this graph of Google's speech model accuracy across 2013 to 2017: https://sonix.ai/packs/media/images/corp/articles/history-of-voice-recognition-accuracy-2017-4c86e4af42d67e4bd56d70b15235696e.jpg https://sonix.ai/packs/media/images/corp/articles/history-of... Or this that shows a similar pattern: https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/external/tq2016/charts/03/WIDE_TQC003_3.png https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/externa...
- danjc 4y ago
  Unfortunately 95% isn’t a lot of nines
  - Closi 4y ago
    Human transcription accuracy is just two nines :)
cdrini 4y ago
Main things that have changed are: 1) Improvements in speech to text, as others have mentioned 2) Improvements in language models (and model size) allowing for more flexible interpretation of speech. This isn't dictation anymore. It's more like instruction. You don't have to tell the computer exactly what to write, you tell it in much more broader terms. Eg "pull this out into a function". Or "delete the cookie before creating the transaction". Or "lint the file". That's my guess anyways! This mostly feels like a voice interface to Copilot in a lot of ways. Can't say whether it'll be effective, but I'd love to be able to program while I'm e.g. on a stationary bike!

msaharia 4y ago

Dragon speech? I used it quite a bit 10 years ago!

kreddor 4y ago

It might have been Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I remember toying around with it 20 years ago or so. Apparently it has just been bought by Microsoft.

tjixxu 4y ago
I have good memories spending 4+ hours training Dragon to end up with what seemed like 30% accuracy.

bagels 4y ago

Many people dictate messages on their phones. Doctors use it extensively.

towawy 4y ago
Not a doctor, but I also started to using the dictation feature on my iPhone more and more recently. It's often more convenient than typing when I'm walking (which I do a lot) and the pickup of voice messaging, talking to your phone like it's a mic, made me more comfortable doing it in public.

arez 4y ago

one thing that changed that you can see in a demo, that it's speech recognition paired with a neural network. He doesn't have to say "write titanic = titanic.dropDuplicated()" he just says, "drop duplicates from titanic" so you "in theory" have to write less. It probably falls apart when you have more complex things to write and then you have to fallback to speaking it out word for word, but it is an interesting development

xigoi 4y ago
There is a reason we don't have many programming languages where you can say “drop duplicates from titanic”.
- arez 4y ago
  what's the reason?
  - xigoi 4y ago
    Natural language is ambiguous and doesn't represent nested structures well.
- tlb 4y ago
  Programming languages need to be unambiguous, but voice interfaces to them don't have to be. With a voice interface, you can say something vague, see what it gets translated into, and either click Run or edit it.

rommel917 4y ago

WFH become more common. You cant program with voice in office full of people who also program with voice. At home you can multytask work with voice while doing home stuff with hands. You just need projector do display on wall while you cook or assemble IKEA table.

JW_00000 4y ago
I cannot even concentrate on reading a text while the radio is playing; let alone programming while assembling furniture.

mmikeff 4y ago

I sometimes use voice recognition in Notes on my Mac to write up my meeting notes, but I find that my waffly speech results in very verbose notes. Also still quite a few mis-hears where I read my notes back later and have to work out what I was actually saying. Can I have transcription that can then turn my rambling into neat and concise prose?

junon 4y ago

Ah yes, Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Training for hours and hours and getting incredibly subpar results. It was a fun toy but there's a reason it didn't really take off in corporate settings.

tecleandor 4y ago
Dragon NaturallySpeaking is still alive at least in medical practice. Its Nuance Dragon Medical One product is fairly popular in some regions for medical report dictation as radiologists don't like to write them down (sorry ;) ). I've seen a Philips product in that field too. Seems like LG's TVs used their recognition engine for a while (don't know if that's still valid) The story for the most mainstream-popular dictation softwares is kind of funny. Back in the late 90's there was Dragon NaturallySpeaking and IBM's ViaVoice. In early 00s, after a financial fraud and bankruptcy involving both the then current Dragon owners and Goldman Sachs, they got bought by Scansoft. Scansoft bought Nuance, began to use its name, and then got exclusive rights for ViaVoice (!) from IBM. Now, in March this year, Nuance has been acquire by Microsoft.
- junon 4y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know the history there! Just remember playing with it as a kid :)
Aeolun 4y ago
The best recognition rates on the words ‘scratch that’, which you used every other sentence.

mjochim 4y ago

> What's changed since then in terms of technology? Unless it's very significant, I suspect it will go the same way. Apart from an assistive technology viewpoint, my gut instinct is that it's not that satisfying or rewarding talking to a computer all day. Training data is now abundant compared to twenty years ago, and so is computation power. That means training can be much more complex now. The underlying technology is now typically neural networks (broadly speaking), whereas twenty years ago it might have been Hidden Markov Models. Overall, recognition quality, even without speaker-specific training, is now on a very different level than back then. Whether it’s considered good is a matter of opinion. But it’s significantly better than twenty years ago.

Double_a_92 4y ago

Isn't that a very niche application simply because it's voice-based? I.e. it can only be used if you are alone in an office, otherwise you would be annoying your coworkers and the voices would get mixed up.

Aeolun 4y ago

The only time I’ve ever successfully used voice recognition was teaching skyrim to recognize my words of power. Shouting fus-roh-dah ! was incredibly satisfying.

Closi 4y ago

> What's changed since then in terms of technology? Unless it's very significant, I suspect it will go the same way. Apart from an assistive technology viewpoint, my gut instinct is that it's not that satisfying or rewarding talking to a computer all day. It's hugely significant - look at this graph of Google's speech model accuracy across 2013 to 2017: https://sonix.ai/packs/media/images/corp/articles/history-of-voice-recognition-accuracy-2017-4c86e4af42d67e4bd56d70b15235696e.jpg https://sonix.ai/packs/media/images/corp/articles/history-of... Or this that shows a similar pattern: https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/external/tq2016/charts/03/WIDE_TQC003_3.png https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/externa...

danjc 4y ago
Unfortunately 95% isn’t a lot of nines
- Closi 4y ago
  Human transcription accuracy is just two nines :)

cdrini 4y ago

Main things that have changed are: 1) Improvements in speech to text, as others have mentioned 2) Improvements in language models (and model size) allowing for more flexible interpretation of speech. This isn't dictation anymore. It's more like instruction. You don't have to tell the computer exactly what to write, you tell it in much more broader terms. Eg "pull this out into a function". Or "delete the cookie before creating the transaction". Or "lint the file". That's my guess anyways! This mostly feels like a voice interface to Copilot in a lot of ways. Can't say whether it'll be effective, but I'd love to be able to program while I'm e.g. on a stationary bike!