[ExI] Character Recognition (was Re: AI milestones)

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Thu Mar 8 13:19:59 UTC 2012


On 7 March 2012 19:19, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> The amazing thing is that even after it works fairly well, people
> don't want to use it. I occasionally do dictation of text messages on
> my phone, and tried to use Dragon on my computer, but I tire of it...
> because it isn't 100% accurate is part of it, but the other part is
> that my neural pathways are just better at typing well than speaking
> well...
>

Do you like dictating in general? Personally, I do not.

This is the real issue. Office automation, seventies-style, in law firms
was based on dictaphones and multiple secretaries with electric
typewriters, sometimes even making use of "libraries" of arguments same as
we with cut&paste and templates. There are people I know who wrote entire
books by dictaphones.

I am of a later generation, when lawyers already had PCs on their own
desks... :-)

Where does it leave us with voice interface? Basically, I have two reasons
still to like it:

- Redundance is good anyway. For that matter, I am not much in love with
the mouse itself, but as long as I have an interface with keyboard
alternatives and shortcuts, nothing wrong in having one at hand.

- What I discovered is that all the point with dictation is not really
"hands free", but "eyes free". If you have to input text by quoting or by
translating on the fly or while examining documents, what it saves you is
the effort of mowing the eyes back and forth from the paper to the screen
and the other way around, something that can be *extremely" tiring.

- Devices that do not have a decent keyboard (smartphones, tablets, even
micronetbooks) or scenarios where you are keeping your device with one hand
while standing are also obvious opportunities to put it at work.


-- 
Stefano Vaj
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