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From: elna@netcom.com (Esperanto League N America)
Subject: Re: two agendas of artificial intelligence
Message-ID: <elnaDzqpsA.KuG@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <53t89q$irs@bignews.shef.ac.uk> <5406r5$dtm@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us>
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 17:55:22 GMT
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z007400b@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us (Ralph Silverman) writes in a recent posting (reference <5406r5$dtm@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us>):
>
>	certainly,  great progress in this
>	could be made,  if appropriate resources
>	were to be applied...
>
>	why the gloom?
>
>	perhaps there is a problem here
>	regarding will,  priorities and
>	politics ... this can not be technical
>	in its roots!!!
>
You are naively optimistic.
This is *certainly* a technical problem. A voice recognition program
needs to overcome numerous linguistic obstacles in translating sounds
into writing. Most obvious difficulties in English are the huge number
of homonyms, the prevalance of the schwa, difference in regional
accents. These all provide technical problems.

>	an early vision of the future of
>	computer systems involves increasing
>	similarity to humans in the intellectual
>	capacities of these;  and this idea certainly
>	is promising of realization...
>
The other side is worthy of attention as well. It has been said that 
computer programmers learn to think like computers while they are trying
to teach the computers to think like humans. Perhaps we should consider
learning a language more easily understood by computers to facilitate
our communication. A language with crisp clear vowels and rigorous
orthography would be *much* easier for a voice recognition program
to handle.

Question: Are Japanese or Spanish computer scientists having any better
success with voice recognition programs?


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