Metaglossia: The Translation World

Voice-recognition technology has made significant progress of late, becoming a popular feature of smartphones, automotive navigation and entertainment systems. While a panel of Silicon Valley tech experts says it still has its glitches, it can eventually improve to where talking to a machine is like talking to a person.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — If speech-recognition technology were a human, it would be like a 5- or 6-year-old child. At the age of 1, you can speak to a child, but you have to speak slowly and simply using small words. By 5 or 6, it starts to better understand your words and, more importantly, your meaning.

The comparison of computer speech development to human speech development came up during a panel discussion Aug. 20 at a forum hosted by the Churchill Club of Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, Calif. Representatives of a speech-recognition software company, an automaker and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak discussed where speech recognition has been and where it’s going.

Speech is becoming the new computer user interface, said Quentin Hardy, deputy technology editor of The New York Times and moderator of the panel, continuing a long line of UI evolution from the punch card and the command line interface to the mouse and the touch-screen.

With each advance, the interaction shifts became less machine and more human. When we want to get someone’s attention, we tap them on the shoulder like we tap on a screen, said Wozniak, and when we want to talk to someone, we speak.