But it might surprise you to know that computers are now as good as humans at recognizingwordsin telephone calls.
With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation in 2018, individuals are increasingly aware of their rights.
But before we discuss more about ASR, let me clarify the difference between speech and voice.
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The term voice assistant has been coined to describe devices and services for acting on the spoken word.
Its not a big jump to wrongly describe what they do asvoice recognition.
However, it isspeechthey are attempting to recognize, notvoice.
Voice recognition is about discoveringwhois speaking.
Speech recognition is aboutwhatthey are saying.
Number crunching solutions were therefore not an option.
For example, when we speak English, most of us follow the rules of English grammar.
Hearing I would like mine bags, doesnt make sense.
It would in most circumstances be incorrect to say mine bags, so either they said my or nine.
In a stationery shop, nine makes sense, if at airport customs, my makes more.
Whatever we hear, we subconsciously change the mine to my or nine depending on the situation.
Grammar and context are just two tools we can use to improve performance.
There are others includinglinguistics,semantics, andphonetics.
Herein lies the rub.
We dont teach grammar to children to get them to speak.
At five they are saying:
I cutted the paper.
The temptation has been to let the computer do the same.
One such source specific to each business is email correspondence.
The technology to achieve this is already here and 2020 should see this take off.
And by take off, I mean get high traction in small businesses.
The choice then is between processing it in-house or via a Cloud service.
Without an internet connection, Siri and Alexa would be useless.
Five years ago, neither of these options were viable for SMEs.
Capture if you’re able to
So what does this mean for businesses today?
As the technology quickly evolves, we should capture every call we can.
Any company, no matter how small, cannot afford not to do this.
Speech understanding by computer will eventually catch up with and even surpass the performance of a human.
More importantly, we will lose with it the vital intelligence in those calls.
Wait until ASR is perfect and you may miss the boat.
In 1990 he founded JPY Limited, a state-of-the-art distribution, software development and consultancy company.
Today, JPY represents manufacturers of over 30 software products, distributed through a channel of 100 specialist resellers.
