As you know computers and human beings don’t speak the same language. Interaction however is possible through something we call Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). However with the help of the improvement in language recognition technology, we could switch from the old GUI’s to conversational interfaces. This is mostly important for the smartphone industry and if you really want to segment on a target group it would be the Chinese smartphone industry. The use of internet on smartphones in China has been skyrocketing for the last couple of years, so more people are benefiting from the new technology. Furthermore Chinese characters are not easy to write in text form, it could take some time to send a text message or browse the web, while on the other hand if speech could be used, the task would be many times easier and faster.
Voice interfaces have especially in recent years become more practical, because of advancements in machine learning. Examples of this trend are Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Now. The most prominent company that is striving for conversational interfaces in China is Baidu, the google of China. The search engine is already making impressive progress with the accuracy of its voice recognition. Also the potential is there to advance conversational interfaces to the next step.
In November Baidu came out with their new voice technology, Deep Speech 2. It is a large neural network that associates sounds with words and phrases. The recognition of the technology is with high accuracy. The technology is especially impressive, because of its understanding of Mandarin. Mandarin is very complex and different tones suggest different meanings, however Deep Speech 2 is very capable of still transcribing the speech. Baidu needs to focus mostly now in learning their AI to understand complicated phrases and responding in an appropriate fashion. This way their voice assistant, which is called Du Er, can have a helpful back-and-forth conversation with the user. Their goal in the long run is that all devices, like any home appliance, could understand human speech and respond to us. Something that seems far away, maybe is closer than we think.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600766/10-breakthrough-technologies-2016-conversational-interfaces/
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