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I watched the video...is this anything more than a mashup of groupchat and speech-to-text? Couldn't something similar be achieved with Google's speech to text A

by tsm 12y ago

I watched the video...is this anything more than a mashup of groupchat and speech-to-text? Couldn't something similar be achieved with Google's speech to text API and IRC? I would've been impressed if the transcription was amazing, but there are errors in the video ("foreclosure" instead of "surfer culture", for one).

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nicolasehrhardt 12y ago
I don't think a small team of people can be better than Google or Apple in building a speech to text technology. However, leveraging the tools available to help the deaf is the main idea - at least at the beginning - I think. Going forward, they will probably focus on their "Leap Motion" part of the project: from signs to text/voice and let big companies improve their text to speech algorithms that they would just use. Because that's where big improvement can be made.
- abecedarius 12y ago
  The Leap Motion thing is unrelated, from some other group, at least according to the story. The problem of supporting realtime conversation among multiple people is different enough from voice search that there's scope to differentiate.
- cerrelio 12y ago
  This technology (speaker identification) is 10 years old, and [HMM/neural net] speech recognition is slightly older. So a small team could likely pull it off today just by implementing or using code published by researchers. As long as Transcense have control over the microphone(s), then it might work. Single mic/multispeaker speech recognition is still practically impossible unless the speakers take turns (not always the case).
siglesias 12y ago
A very dismissive and short-sighted comment. The ambition here seems to go beyond the current implementation, to have a "magic" chat view that tracks voices and transcribes them in differing colors automatically and with minimal setup. I laud the effort and encourage the team to play this out for the sake of the hearing impaired. I hope that in the next decade deaf people--and their interlocutors--won't have to hobble together a slew of disparate technologies just to enable a group conversation.
- sdrothrock 12y ago
  > The ambition here seems to go beyond the current implementation, to have a "magic" chat view that tracks voices and transcribes them in differing colors automatically and with minimal setup. To put it another way: real-time subtitles. Imagine having something like this in Google Glass. As a person with profound hearing loss, that blows me away. This technology could easily be repurposed for subtitling videos.
  - Freeboots 12y ago
    Google glass would be a great implementaion
- kbenson 12y ago
  It's not dismissive, it's inquisitive, and it lays out their reasoning why they don't understand what's special about this. In asking what's special, it gives the opportunity for proponents to address those questions specifically as to why they think it's special and different, so other readers that may have shared the original opinion get more information. Your explanation about why you think it's special us useful a good example of a positive outcome of the original comment. The way you initially denigrate the question is not.
  - siglesias 12y ago
    It's undeniably dismissive. Yes, the first sentence is a question, but "is it anything more than X?" is a rhetorical flourish meant to imply that the product is trivially replicated. The next sentence goes on to say that he's not impressed. As pg put it: Maybe you think you're making some sort of important point here. Or maybe you realize your comment is inane and you think it's witty. But (perhaps without realizing it) you and the people upvoting you represent one of the worst forces at work in the world. The people who ridicule new things when they first appear in incomplete form are one of the worst drags on innovation. [1] 1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4356562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4356562
qq66 12y ago
I just drove the new Tesla, it's really nothing more than a battery, a motor, and wheels. Really nothing that couldn't have been done 100 years ago :)
mcherm 12y ago
You are completely correct -- this is, indeed, nothing more than a simple mash up of existing commodotized capabilities. Yet there appears to be a market opportunity to sell such a service for as much as $100-300/year. You should build a competing product (a simple mash up) and sell it.

by tsm 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

nicolasehrhardt 12y ago

I don't think a small team of people can be better than Google or Apple in building a speech to text technology. However, leveraging the tools available to help the deaf is the main idea - at least at the beginning - I think. Going forward, they will probably focus on their "Leap Motion" part of the project: from signs to text/voice and let big companies improve their text to speech algorithms that they would just use. Because that's where big improvement can be made.

abecedarius 12y ago
The Leap Motion thing is unrelated, from some other group, at least according to the story. The problem of supporting realtime conversation among multiple people is different enough from voice search that there's scope to differentiate.
cerrelio 12y ago
This technology (speaker identification) is 10 years old, and [HMM/neural net] speech recognition is slightly older. So a small team could likely pull it off today just by implementing or using code published by researchers. As long as Transcense have control over the microphone(s), then it might work. Single mic/multispeaker speech recognition is still practically impossible unless the speakers take turns (not always the case).

siglesias 12y ago

A very dismissive and short-sighted comment. The ambition here seems to go beyond the current implementation, to have a "magic" chat view that tracks voices and transcribes them in differing colors automatically and with minimal setup. I laud the effort and encourage the team to play this out for the sake of the hearing impaired. I hope that in the next decade deaf people--and their interlocutors--won't have to hobble together a slew of disparate technologies just to enable a group conversation.

sdrothrock 12y ago
> The ambition here seems to go beyond the current implementation, to have a "magic" chat view that tracks voices and transcribes them in differing colors automatically and with minimal setup. To put it another way: real-time subtitles. Imagine having something like this in Google Glass. As a person with profound hearing loss, that blows me away. This technology could easily be repurposed for subtitling videos.
- Freeboots 12y ago
  Google glass would be a great implementaion
kbenson 12y ago
It's not dismissive, it's inquisitive, and it lays out their reasoning why they don't understand what's special about this. In asking what's special, it gives the opportunity for proponents to address those questions specifically as to why they think it's special and different, so other readers that may have shared the original opinion get more information. Your explanation about why you think it's special us useful a good example of a positive outcome of the original comment. The way you initially denigrate the question is not.
- siglesias 12y ago
  It's undeniably dismissive. Yes, the first sentence is a question, but "is it anything more than X?" is a rhetorical flourish meant to imply that the product is trivially replicated. The next sentence goes on to say that he's not impressed. As pg put it: Maybe you think you're making some sort of important point here. Or maybe you realize your comment is inane and you think it's witty. But (perhaps without realizing it) you and the people upvoting you represent one of the worst forces at work in the world. The people who ridicule new things when they first appear in incomplete form are one of the worst drags on innovation. [1] 1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4356562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4356562

qq66 12y ago

I just drove the new Tesla, it's really nothing more than a battery, a motor, and wheels. Really nothing that couldn't have been done 100 years ago :)

mcherm 12y ago

You are completely correct -- this is, indeed, nothing more than a simple mash up of existing commodotized capabilities. Yet there appears to be a market opportunity to sell such a service for as much as $100-300/year. You should build a competing product (a simple mash up) and sell it.