IBM speech recognition is on the verge of super-human accuracy

pulse

March 9, 2017 5:03 PM

Humans miss about 5% of words during a normal conversation. IBM has developed software that could quickly surpass that rate, making it super-human.

IBM's CEO, Ginny Rometty.

In the world of speech recognition software, 5.1% is kind of a magic number.

Companies that can create software with error rates falling in that ballpark are essentially matching the capabilities of humans, who miss roughly 5% of the words in a given conversation.

On March 7, IBM announced it had become the first to home in on that benchmark, having achieved a rate of 5.5%. The breakthrough signals a big win for artificial intelligence that could eventually live in smartphones and voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant.

Though experts like Hirschberg say machines still can't pick up certain nuances of speech, such as tone and metaphor, software has made considerable advances in rote transcription. And the tests aren't feeding machines softballs: In the latest assessment, software had to discern what humans were saying in everyday contexts, such as buying a car, which were littered with stutters, ums, and mumbling.

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