Talking to Bots

Speech recognition and talking with machines is not a new area of research but there seems to be growth in an awkward way. Talking with machines is more than having a machine determining what is said like speech recognition. It is about understanding what is meant by the words we say and respond in a coherent way. I have to admit some of the replies we get from Alexa, Siri, or Cortana are downright funny. Why are so many responses incoherent? In part, I think voice recognition is still not perfect, you only need to try speech to text features on your phone to know that what we say is not always understood clearly. How can AI respond coherently if it does not recognize what we are saying? Voice recognition is only part of the problem. Context, tone of voice, ethical considerations and body language will also be a challenge for AI programmers.

How far away are we from an AI that could really pass the Turing test.

Behind the Mic: The Science of Talking with Computers

Language. Easy for humans to understand (most of the time), but not so easy for computers. This is a short film about speech recognition, language understanding, neural nets, and using our voices to communicate with the technology around us. (Video Removed)

Two robots talking to each other. Gone wrong