Voice recognition that finally holds up its end of a conversation is revolutionizing customer service. Now the goal is to make natural language the way to find any type of information, anywhere.
"IwanttoflyfromBostontoMilwaukeenext
Saturdayformysisters
birthdayandIdontwanttostopin
ChicagoandIdontwantto
paymorethanfourhundreddollars
andthepartystartsatthreeoclocksoI
needtogettherebeforethen."
Say that to a human airline agent nicely, and he or she will quickly disentangle your words and find flights that meet your criteria. Say it to the airline's automated reservations line, however, and all you're likely to get is a cheery digital voice intoning, "Sorry, I didn't catch that."
Don't blame the voice. Even assuming the airline's computers overcame the garbled words, background noise, and Boston accent to render the request into accurate text, no language-processing system has the computational firepower to make sense of your price and routing constraints, ignore irrelevancies like the fact that Saturday is your sister's birthday, and understand that if the party starts at 3:00 p.m., you're not interested in flights that arrive in Milwaukee at 4:00.
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