Word: speech
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Automatic speech recognition, the technology that enables computers to respond to spoken commands, is old hat to fictional electronic brains like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but still a primitive art in the real world. Computers are not yet discerning enough to cope with the ambiguities of spoken language or with a wide range of accents and tonal qualities. Making sense out of human discourse, says Dataquest Analyst Kenneth Lim, "is quite possibly the most difficult thing for a computer to do, other than actually thinking...
Less complex versions of that technology have begun to show up at electronics stores. Adventurous consumers can purchase voice-controlled personal computers, speech-activated video games, even videotape-editing machines that understand commands like "cut" and "splice...
...they might, computer scientists seemed unable to overcome these deficiencies--until Victor Zue came along. Zue is a Chinese-born M.I.T. scientist who decided to teach himself to read spectrograms (computer-enhanced versions of the electrical wave forms of speech) as if they were words. This was no easy task. While spectrograms made by one person repeating the same word look alike, those made by another differ considerably. Zue discovered, however, that no matter how unlike spectrograms appear, they all have certain features in common. For example, the s in stop will appear as a dark rectangular wedge, no matter...
When news of Zue's accomplishment reached speech scientists at Pittsburgh's Carnegie-Mellon University, it was greeted with great excitement. The researchers knew that if a human could read a spectrogram, then a computer could too. In 1979 they invited Zue to spend a couple of days in their Pittsburgh laboratories. "I had no idea what was up," says Zue. The invitation turned out to involve 48 hours of rigorous testing with hundreds of voice spectrograms. At one point, the Carnegie-Mellon team tried to trip up Zue with the phrase "A stitch in dime saves nine," expecting...
...speed with which Gorbachev was ratified as the General Secretary of the Communist Party--less than 24 hours after Chernenko's death--puzzled Western diplomats. Some insight into Gorbachev's confirmation emerged last week with the release of Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko's nominating speech to the Central Committee. The address seemed to Western analysts to have been aimed at blunting potential criticism that Gorbachev, 54, was too outspoken. Gromyko lauded the new leader for expressing himself with a "Leninist directness." Gromyko also stressed that Gorbachev had in effect been "brilliantly" running the country during Chernenko's illness...