What are the limitations of dictation technology?
Most people consider the human-computer interaction using speech a problem of transcription. People hit upon dictation as a solution to that problem, and lots of people are chasing that. But my belief is that getting information means more to most people than generating a document using dictation systems. It’s a human-centric view: The burden is on the machine to learn to communicate with you. Q: So what types of applications do you expect to see in the next five years? A: I have a personal litmus test for whether an application is worth pursuing with speech systems. First, it must have information that millions of people care about, like sports, stocks, weather. Second, it must be information that keeps changing, so people have a reason to keep coming back. You need that kind of demand to build a system. Third, the domain must be inherently closed. There are only 2,000 cities in the world for air travel, for instance. Or 1,000 makes and models of cars since the automobile was invented
