Colleagues,
As reported in the New York Times ... For decades, computer scientists have been pursuing artificial
intelligence — the use of computers to simulate human thinking. But in recent years, rapid progress has been made in machines that can listen, speak, see, reason and learn, in their way...
... The artificial intelligence technology that has moved furthest into
the mainstream is computer understanding of what humans are saying. People increasingly talk to their cellphones to find things, instead of typing. Both
Google’s and Microsoft’s search services now respond to voice commands...
... The
number of American
doctors using speech software to record and transcribe accounts of patient visits and treatments has more than tripled in the past three years to 150,000. The progress is striking. A few years ago, supraspinatus (a rotator cuff muscle) got translated as “fish banana.” Today, the software transcribes all kinds of medical terminology letter perfect, doctors say...
... A host of companies —
AT&T,
Microsoft, Google and startups — are investing in services that hint at the concept of machines that can act on spoken commands...
...Perhaps the furthest along is
Siri, a Silicon Valley company offering a
“virtual personal assistant,” a collection of software programs that can listen to a request, find information and take action..
...
Apple is
so impressed that it bought Siri in April in a private transaction estimated at more than $200 million...
... In cars, too, speech recognition systems have vastly improved. In just
three years, the
Ford
Motor Company, using Nuance software, has increased the number of speech commands its vehicles recognize from 100 words to 10,000 words and phrases...
Read on at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/science/25voice.html?th&emc=thENJOY!
CC