4 ms·

It was never “solved” unless you can point me to OCR software that is 100% accurate. You can take 5 seconds to google “ocr with llm” and find tons of articles e

by prng2021 2y ago

It was never “solved” unless you can point me to OCR software that is 100% accurate. You can take 5 seconds to google “ocr with llm” and find tons of articles explaining how LLMs can enhance OCR. Here’s an example: https://trustdecision.com/resources/blog/revolutionizing-ocr-with-large-language-models https://trustdecision.com/resources/blog/revolutionizing-ocr...

sandworm101 2y ago
By that standard, no problem has ever been solved by anyone. I prefer to believe that a great many everyday tech issues were in fact tackled and solved in the past by people who had never even heard of LLMs. So too many things were done in finance long before blockchains solved everything for us.
- VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
  OCR is not perfect. And therefore it is not "solved".
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    That definition, solved=perfect, is not what sandworm meant and it's an irrelevant definition to this conversation because it's an impossible standard. Insisting we switch to that definition is just being unproductive and unhelpful. And it's pure semantics because you know what they meant.
    - philipwhiuk 2y ago
      Not really, because this entire post is about that last fraction of a %.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        It's not, because then they wouldn't want humans, because humans can't do 100% either.
        jadamson 2y ago
        That's only true if the x% humans can't do is the same x% that OCR can't do.
        Dylan16807 2y ago
        I know it matters what percent humans can do. But specifically "that last fraction of a percent" is in comparison to 100, not to humans. The argument I was replying to was about perfection, and rejecting anything short of it. Comparing to humans is a much better idea, and removes the entire argument of "OCR literally can't be that good so the problem isn't solved".
- prng2021 2y ago
  From the article I linked: “Our internal tests reveal a leap in accuracy from 98.97% to 99.56%, while customer test sets have shown an increase from 95.61% to 98.02%. In some cases where the document photos are unclear or poorly formatted, the accuracy could be improved by over 20% to 30%.”
- flir 2y ago
  In my experience the chatbots have bumped transcription accuracy quite a bit. (Of course, it's possible I just don't have access to the best-in-class OCR software I should be comparing against). (I always go over the transcript by hand, but I'd have to do that with OCR anyway).
- asveikau 2y ago
  OCR is very bad. As an example look at subtitle rips for DVD and Blu-ray. The discs store them as images of rendered computer text. A popular format for rippers is SRT, where it will be stored as utf-8 and rendered by the player. So when you rip subtitles, there's an OCR step. These are computer rendered text in a small handful of fonts. And decent OCR still chokes on it often.
tjwebbnorfolk 2y ago
point me to handwriting that is 100% legible... If 100% is your standard, good luck solving anything ever.
- manquer 2y ago
  I think OP is saying there is always scope for improvement until it is 100% not that 100% or bust .
- elmomle 2y ago
  Most handwriting is legible to its owner. This would indicate that there is enough consistency within a person's writing style to differentiate letters, etc., even if certain assumptions about resemblance to any standard may not hold. I wonder if there are modern OCR methods that incorporate old code-breaking techniques like frequency analysis.
  - Boldened15 2y ago
    > Most handwriting is legible to its owner. Not necessarily, I'd be surprised if I could fully understand my old handwritten notes from when I was in school (years ago), since I've always had messy handwriting and no longer have the context in each subject matter to guess. LLMs could help in some of those cases, since it would have knowledge of history/chemistry/etc. and could fill in the blanks better than I could at this point. Though the hallucinations would no doubt outweigh it.

sandworm101 2y ago

By that standard, no problem has ever been solved by anyone. I prefer to believe that a great many everyday tech issues were in fact tackled and solved in the past by people who had never even heard of LLMs. So too many things were done in finance long before blockchains solved everything for us.

VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
OCR is not perfect. And therefore it is not "solved".
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  That definition, solved=perfect, is not what sandworm meant and it's an irrelevant definition to this conversation because it's an impossible standard. Insisting we switch to that definition is just being unproductive and unhelpful. And it's pure semantics because you know what they meant.
  - philipwhiuk 2y ago
    Not really, because this entire post is about that last fraction of a %.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      It's not, because then they wouldn't want humans, because humans can't do 100% either.
      - jadamson 2y ago
        That's only true if the x% humans can't do is the same x% that OCR can't do.
        Dylan16807 2y ago
        I know it matters what percent humans can do. But specifically "that last fraction of a percent" is in comparison to 100, not to humans. The argument I was replying to was about perfection, and rejecting anything short of it. Comparing to humans is a much better idea, and removes the entire argument of "OCR literally can't be that good so the problem isn't solved".
prng2021 2y ago
From the article I linked: “Our internal tests reveal a leap in accuracy from 98.97% to 99.56%, while customer test sets have shown an increase from 95.61% to 98.02%. In some cases where the document photos are unclear or poorly formatted, the accuracy could be improved by over 20% to 30%.”
flir 2y ago
In my experience the chatbots have bumped transcription accuracy quite a bit. (Of course, it's possible I just don't have access to the best-in-class OCR software I should be comparing against). (I always go over the transcript by hand, but I'd have to do that with OCR anyway).
asveikau 2y ago
OCR is very bad. As an example look at subtitle rips for DVD and Blu-ray. The discs store them as images of rendered computer text. A popular format for rippers is SRT, where it will be stored as utf-8 and rendered by the player. So when you rip subtitles, there's an OCR step. These are computer rendered text in a small handful of fonts. And decent OCR still chokes on it often.

tjwebbnorfolk 2y ago

point me to handwriting that is 100% legible... If 100% is your standard, good luck solving anything ever.

manquer 2y ago
I think OP is saying there is always scope for improvement until it is 100% not that 100% or bust .
elmomle 2y ago
Most handwriting is legible to its owner. This would indicate that there is enough consistency within a person's writing style to differentiate letters, etc., even if certain assumptions about resemblance to any standard may not hold. I wonder if there are modern OCR methods that incorporate old code-breaking techniques like frequency analysis.
- Boldened15 2y ago
  > Most handwriting is legible to its owner. Not necessarily, I'd be surprised if I could fully understand my old handwritten notes from when I was in school (years ago), since I've always had messy handwriting and no longer have the context in each subject matter to guess. LLMs could help in some of those cases, since it would have knowledge of history/chemistry/etc. and could fill in the blanks better than I could at this point. Though the hallucinations would no doubt outweigh it.