Robotic Nation Evidence

Robotic Speech Processing

Microsoft Makes More Speech Server Noise

From the article:

Many customers are thinking about using Speech Server, first and foremost, as part of their end-to-end call-center solutions, Lee says.

For example, Grange Insurance has developed a call-center application based on Speech Server that will allow customers to access their insurance information by phone. Mary Kay has developed a Speech Server application that will allow its sales force to call and check on customer profiles. The New York Board of Education has built a Speech-Server-centric system that will enable parents to call in and check on their children's homework record, school attendance, etc. Joint-deployment partners Jet Blue Airways and GMAC also are building Speech Server applications, according to Microsoft.

"By the time we ship (Speech Server), we expect all of these applications to be in full use," Lee says.

Various Microsoft divisions also are working with the Speech Server technology, too. The company has developed what it calls its "dial-zero" application that will allow callers attempting to reach Microsoft employees via the corporate switchboard to speak employee names that the system, which looks them up in the company directory. Lee says the Speech Server technology will allow callers an unusual amount of flexibility in how they speak (or even spell) the names. The final system will be deployed company-wide in another month, he says.

This related article contains the following quote:

"The kind of interaction that Data has on 'Star Trek' is still 20 years away," said James Larson, program chairman for the 9th Annual SpeechTEK International Educational Conference and Exposition, which opened Monday and runs through Thursday.

For those unfamiliar with the character named Data, he is a humanoid robot (played by Brent Spiner) who speaks and understands speech at a level equivalent to a human being. So, by 2023 or so, the industry is predicting completely fluid, human-level voice interactions with robots.