Round Robin slides - AMP 14

1
Automatic Speech Recognition and Natural Language
understanding
2
Definitions

• ASR - The process by which the computer
  identifies normal human speech
• NLU - Effective interpretation of text language
  to provide task direction

3
ASR - How does it work?
1) Training
Analog to Digital Phoneme extraction
Hidden Markov Modeling
2) Using
Pattern Matching
Text output
4
Issues

• Benefits
• Speed in data entry
• typing 120 wpm
• speech 300 wpm
• Persons w/ Disabilities
• Remove need for keyboards
• Obstacles
• Speaker Dependent v. Independent
• Equipment - high quality microphone, large RAM,
  speaker DB

5
ASR Applications

• Telephone services
• Office Work - dictation
• Manufacturing -Warehousing
• Medical Legal services

6
Major Vendors

• Dragon Systems, Inc. (http//www.naturallyspeaking
  .com)
• IBM Corporation
  (http//www-4.ibm.com/software/speech/)
• Lernout Hauspie (http//www.lhs.com/)

7
NLU - Interacting with machines (and have them
do what we want)

• Humans sense your wishes, and try to act
  accordingly.
• Computers do not sense their environment, do not
  communicate with other devices, and do not have a
  sense of context.

8
Actual Newspaper Headings
9
Some of the Issues

• Ambiguity
• I hit the man with the hammer
• The pitcher is empty.
• Imprecision
• Ive been waiting in the doctors office for a
  long time
• The crops died because it hadnt rained in a long
  time
• The dinosaurs lived a long time ago
• Incompleteness
• Lets go to McDonalds. The keys are on the table.
• Inaccuracy
• Cmon whadda ya mean?

10
What is understanding?
11
First versus Nth order Logic

• First Order
• On a frozen dinner
• Serving suggestion Defrost.
• On a hotel-provided shower cap
• Fits one head.
• On a jar of Sainsburys peanuts
• Warning contains nuts
• American Airlines peanuts instructions
• Instructions open packet, eat nuts.
• Nth Order
• Childrens Cough Medicine
• Do not drive car or operate machinery
• On TESCOs Tirimisu Dessert
• Do not turn upside down.
• (Printed on the bottom of the box.)
• On a bag of Fritos
• You could be a winner!
• No purchase necessary.
• Details inside.

12
What about common sense?

• Douglas Lenat - Cycorp
• WWW.Cyc.com
• 100 million common sense algorithms
• example when you cut a sandwich in half you
  still have a sandwich, when you cut a table in
  half you have sawdust .

13
The Cyc Platform
14
Natural Language Processing

• Logic/Contextual Processing
• Semantic Interpretation
• Syntactical Parser
• Lexical Interpretation

15
NLU Applications

• machine translation
• QA
• front-end to DBMS
• grammar checkers
• text/story/search categorization

16
Demonstrations

• Dragon Dictate
• Weather
• Jupiter 1-888-573-8255 1-888-573-TALK
• Flight Schedules
• Pegasus 1-877-MIT-TALK (1-877-648-8255).
• Babelfish http//babelfish.altavista.com/translate
  .dyn

17
To Whom it May Concern

• I am pleased to say ______ is a former colleague
  of mine. I most enthusiastically recommend this
  candidate with no qualifications whatsoever. In
  my opinion you will be very fortunate to get
  ______ to work for you. I would urge you to waste
  no time in making ______ an offer of employment.
  I cant say enough good things about _____ or
  recommend him/her too highly. In conclusion, I
  can assure you that no person would be better for
  your position.