Speech recognition technology reached 80% accuracy in 2001, then leveled off. The human ear has about 98% accuracy. Why haven't computers improved in this area? Robert Fortner looks at several reasons.

Many spoken words sound the same. Saying “recognize speech” makes a sound that can be indistinguishable from “wreck a nice beach.” Other laughers include “wreck an eyes peach” and “recondite speech.” But with a little knowledge of word meaning and grammar, it seems like a computer ought to be able to puzzle it out. Ironically, however, much of the progress in speech recognition came from a conscious rejection of the deeper dimensions of language. As an IBM researcher famously put it: “Every time I fire a linguist my system improves.” But pink-slipping all the linguistics PhDs only gets you 80% accuracy, at best.

We can take comfort in knowing that the human brain is still way ahead of machines. Link -via Metafilter

(image source: Creative Coffins)