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SpinVox "Recognition" Is Often Expensive Human Transcription

Posted by timothy on from the comes-with-free-offsite-backups dept.

An anonymous reader writes "SpinVox offers to convert voice messages to text using a system called D2 or 'the Brain.' According to BBC News, said 'Brain' is often of the old-fashioned kind: SpinVox is sending private voice messages to South Africa, the Philippines, and maybe Egypt to be typed by people in a call centre, despite being registered as keeping all private data inside Europe and claiming that the text is somehow anonymised. Insiders say they transcribed 'love messages, secret messages' and everything else from beginning to end, and the company is being bled dry by the cost: SpinVox has been locked out of one of their data centers over a payment dispute. SpinVox refuses to comment further on details — but according to their web page, they're 'enabling the Speech 3.0, Voice 3.0, and Business 3.0 markets,' whatever that means."

17 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. But it's not crazy by Kell+Bengal · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It may be they lied about keeping user supplied data in house, and they may have implied that they used advanced technological means to do the transcription, but if their service does what it says I can't blame them for using human labour to do the transcription. Human brains remain the only high performance computer manufactured with unskilled labour.

    --
    Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
    altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
    1. Re:But it's not crazy by MrMista_B · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What?

      No.

      Their service says that they keep user supplied data in house. They do not.
      Their service says that they use advanced technological means to do the transcription. They do not.

      How on earth do you take that to mean 'their service does what it says'?

      You are wrong.

    2. Re:But it's not crazy by bertoelcon · · Score: 2, Insightful
      You try to hard, it's really not that complicated.

      A brain comes from moron woman even if it has the IQ of a contraceptive sponge.

      --
      Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
    3. Re:But it's not crazy by Molochi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Where are we as a species, if making babies is a fetish?

      --
      "The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
    4. Re:But it's not crazy by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Insightful

      From a purely evolutionary point of view? We're quite sane, if you ask me. If the idea of impregnating your woman gives you a boner, I'd say it's about as close to the original idea behind sex as it can be.

      Don't tell anyone but, hey, getting her pregnant was the idea behind fucking. I know, it kinda changed in the meantime, but originally, that was the plan.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    5. Re:But it's not crazy by quadrox · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Uhh... Somehow I got confused about who said what - disregard above post or mod it down into obscurity where it belongs...

    6. Re:But it's not crazy by tomcrick · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think it's more likely that these people speak better, more grammatically correct English than the average Brit or American.

      Since when has the average person spoken grammatically correct British/American English? What about slang, regional vocabulary, accents?

      I think it'd be hard for a native speaker to translate in a lot of cases e.g. north/south in the UK.

  2. Business 3.0? by Threni · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We're not even done with Bubble 2.0 yet!

    1. Re:Business 3.0? by QuoteMstr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When we repealed the (very good) legislation enacted in response to the Great Depression, we restore to market to its natural boom-bust cycle. We'll keep going through these periods until we restore the safeguards that our great-grandparents wisely created. Even without the dubious benefits of computer models and Chicago economics, these people gave us 50 years of prosperity that we've managed to wreck in a decade. Shouldn't we stop arrogantly assuming that they were wrong, we are right, and accept that we might need regulation after all?

    2. Re:Business 3.0? by bendodge · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We need some regulation. The item we don't need that you forgot is subsidies.

      --
      The government can't save you.
  3. Nothing new here by ExtraT · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Human transcription performed on industrial scale by non-native speakers is nothing new. For example, medical imaging texts are typed up by Cheap Foreign Labour from voice messages recorded by doctors.
    So remember this next time you read the analysis of your expensive MRI test. ;)

  4. When all you have is a hammer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    every problem looks like a nail.

    When all you have is six billion, renewable fueled, autonomous, self replicating, self housing, self programing, hundred billion node neural networks...
    who the fuck needs an AI for voice recognition?

  5. Bender vs Apu by Sloppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Losing your job to Bender: technological progress.

    Losing your job to Apu: outrage.

    But really, what's the difference? A service is a service. It's all progress .. sort of.

    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
    1. Re:Bender vs Apu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Huh? What about Luddites?

      People have been irate about losing their job to technology for a very long time.

      And, people have been outrages about losing their job to immigrants for a long time.

      I bet being outraged at losing one's job to outsourcing is the newest social phenomena.

      You see, people want jobs and don't like losing their jobs. That's the source of the outrage, not the mechanism of job loss.

    2. Re:Bender vs Apu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So where is your outrage against the western corporation that hired them to lie to you?

  6. Re:Speech 3.0 by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Speech 3.0: 50% more hype.

    Seriously. I'm just waiting for "Web 3.0. For everyone that got fed up with Web 2.0 and wants more of everything."

    Web 2.0 was "You make the content, we make the profit".

    Web 3.0 will be "We also make you host the content through P2P, and we'd launch it, we haven't figured out how to make profit of it, though".

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  7. Re:Economic Dogmas by binkzz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't quite see how you can blame this on Evangelics, whether they're real Evangelics or just by name.

    The cause of economic downfall is almost always plain greed.

    --
    'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7