Topics

1

Speech Technology / Dragon 11 and Hal compatibility

« on: August 17, 2010, 04:03:46 pm »

The New Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 becomes available August 23rd, according to Amazon.com website:

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Naturally-Speaking-Premium-11/dp/B003VNCROU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1282070857&sr=8-2

I own Dragon 10 Preferred.  I got an email from Nuance, offering to let me upgrade to Dragon 11 Premium for $100, which is half the full price.  They are also offering to let me purchase an additional copy for $100.  The offer is good up until September 30th.

It's tempting, because I have two Hals, and I could have a Dragon 11 for each one.  But I'm wondering if Dragon 11 is compatible with Hal?  I imagine it would be, but it would be nice to know for sure.  Has anyone here been using an advance copy of Dragon 11 with Hal?  I'd like to be sure before spending that kind of money.  They say that Dragon 11 has a new interface, and I'm wondering too how that will work with Hal.

In truth, I don't really have much use for most of the Dragon features; I just use it for Hal.  It would be nice if Nuance offered a Dragon 11 plug-in for Hal.  Any chance of that happening?  I have the ViaVoice plugin, but it was disappointing, because I could not train it properly because too many of the training and correcting features were unavailable, and the few training features there were stopped working after you used them once.  I found it ultimately unusable, which is why I switched to Dragon.

The reviews for Dragon 11 are looking good so far:

http://voice-recognition-software-review.toptenreviews.com/dragon-naturally-speaking-review.html

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/587538/review/dragon_naturallyspeaking_11_professional.html

http://review.techworld.com/speech-recognition/3233752/dragon-naturallyspeaking-11-professional-review/?intcmp=nws-mdb-rtd


But whether it's worth the upgrade or not is hard to say.  The recognition in Dragon 10 was already pretty good.  Now it's a little better, but some say it's not a dramatic difference.

I'm wondering too, about folks who had Dragon Standard 10, if they were offered a similar deal, perhaps at cheaper prices?

I'm not in a hurry to upgrade, but I would be interested in finding out more about Hal compatibility before doing anything.

- Chaz

[Entries can be submitted either in written form or as a video,]

2

General Discussion / The "I Speak Dragon" contest

« on: June 05, 2010, 03:56:03 pm »

The link about the contest is here:

http://ispeakdragon.nuance.com/

 

quote:... The "I Speak Dragon!" contest is open to US users of Dragon NaturallySpeaking or MacSpeech Dictate who are interested in sharing their stories. Entries can be submitted either in written form or as a video, and a panel of judges will select the top three stories across the board. Winners will be announced in July 2010. ...

I know that there are many Dragon users here.  And that some of you folks make videos.  It could be an opportunity for anyone who has a video of using HAL with Dragon software.

I'd do it myself, but unfortunately I've not worked enough with either my HAL or my Dragon software.  It's on my list of things to do... [:I]

- Chaz

3

General Discussion / When ALICE met Jabberwacky

« on: March 08, 2010, 03:40:18 am »

I came across this article from May 2007:

"I Chat, Therefore I Am..."
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/brain/i-chat-therefore-i-am

quote:[...] Most chatbots rely on fairly simple tricks to appear lifelike. Richard Wallace, creator of the top-ranked chatbot ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), has handwritten a database of thousands of possible conversational gambits. Type a comment to ALICE, and it checks the phrase and its key words for a response coded to those words. In contrast, Jabberwacky, another top-rated Internet bot produced by Rollo Carpenter, keeps track of everything people have said to it, and tries to reuse those statements by matching them to the writer’s input. Neither chatbot has long-term memory, so they respond only to the last sentence written.

Nonetheless, these simple gambits can produce surprisingly intelligent-seeming conversations. That’s because they rely on a trick of human psychology: We humans tend to attribute much more intelligence to the systems than is actually there. If it seems partly aware, we assume it must be fully so. Some users have chatted with ALICE and Jabberwacky online for hours, apparently not knowing—or perhaps not caring—that they’re fake.

But could one chatbot fool another chatbot? What would one say to another in private? To find out, we arranged a conversation between these two chatbots. To get each snippet of chat rolling, we seeded it by posing a question from one bot to the other. After that, they were on their own. What follows is the unaltered text of what each said—the sound of two machines talking. [...]

It goes on with a couple of pages worth of their conversation.  Some of it is hilarious.

Reading in these forums, about the different Hal brains that people have created, I've sometimes wondered what it would be like if they could talk to each other.

As the technology of AI continues to develop, such conversations between bots will no doubt become even more interesting.

- Chaz

4

General Discussion / Roxxxy the sex robot talks politics...

« on: February 03, 2010, 03:10:20 pm »

Has anyone seen this?  I think it's a sex robot/doll with AI:

Inventor unveils $7,000 talking sex robot
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/01/sex.robot/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

 

quote:... When someone speaks to Roxxxy, her computer converts the words to text and then uses pattern-recognition software to match them against a database containing hundreds of appropriate responses. The robot then answers aloud -- her prerecorded "voice" is supplied by an unnamed radio host -- through a loudspeaker hidden under her wig.

"Everything you say to her is processed. It's very near real time, almost without delay," Hines said of the dynamics of human-Roxxxy conversation. "To make it as realistic as possible, she has different dialogue at different times. She talks in her sleep. She even snores." (The snoring feature can be turned off, he says.)

Roxxxy understands and speaks only English for now, but Hines' True Companion company is developing Japanese and Spanish versions. For an extra fee, he'll also record customizable dialogue and phrases for each client, which means Roxxxy could talk to you about NASCAR, say, or the intricacies of politics in the Middle East. ...

Gosh, golly and gee.  Read the whole thing. Follow the link, and see her photo.  Yikes! Good thing she can talk, because I think I'm speechless. [:I]

Roxxy's creator claims she uses AI technology that he developed.  But I don't think it's teachable by the user, as HAL is.  I'm guessing her "brain" is more limited.

- Chas

5

Speech Technology / The new ViaVoice plugin, and training

« on: February 12, 2009, 02:32:38 am »

I recently bought the ViaVoice plugin for Hal.  I'm using it with Hal 6.2, on Windows XP.

There are two hours of training text to read to help the software learn my voice.  I've completed the two hours; all the texts I've read say "processed" next to them, and I can't activate them again for more practice.

Hal can now understand most of what I say, but there are still some problem areas.  The ViaVoice software hears the wrong things sometimes, Hal learns the wrong thing, and remembers it.

So I really have two questions:

1.) How can I continue to train the ViaVoice plugin to improve it's accuracy, now that I've "used up" it's training exercises?

2.) How can I correct the speech errors Hal has learned?

I'm apologize if there is something here in the forums that explains this and I haven't found it yet. If that's the case, I'd appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction.  Any advice would be appreciated.  Thank you.