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Part 5: Talking and Listening Computers
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"Come si traduce 'ain't' in italiano? È inglese o americano?"
AERDNA74
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Similar psychological tricks could help other imperfect conversational systems perform better. Waibel predicts that people will eventually be able to talk to a hodgepodge of special purpose programs, each of which passes control to another if it recognizes a conversation is wandering outside the bounds of its expertise.
Your digital travel agent might connect you with a news wire, weather service or local tourist board, all using the same voice during the same phone call.
The phone itself, meanwhile, might be part of a voice-activated wearable computer, with a tiny earpiece speaker and a microphone woven into your shirt. To most observers, you'd appear to be holding a conversation with thin air.
Language pioneers like Waibel and Zue imagine the next generation of kids will grow up conversing with machines as naturally as they do with people.
If you think today's posters, billboards and on-line ads are intrusive, just wait. Twenty years from now, talking and listening computers might be as ubiquitous as print is now.
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