Typingpool: Human Audio Transcription Parallelism

theodp writes "Silly rabbit, parallel processing is not just for Big Data! Building on techniques outlined by Andy Baio back in 2008, Wired writer and 20% Doctrine evangelist Ryan Tate has released Ruby-based software called Typingpool to make audio transcriptions easier and cheaper. 'Typingpool chops your audio into small bits and routes them to the labor marketplace Mechanical Turk,' Tate explains to his reporter pals, 'where workers transcribe the bits in parallel. This produces transcripts much faster than any lone transcriber for as little one-eighth what you pay a transcription service. Better still, workers keep 91 percent of the money you spend.' Remember to Use the Force for Good, Tate adds."

Comments

Re:Training

[iluvcapra]

I suspect distributing even small, redacted portions of a medical or legal dictation would violate the many confidentiality laws in force in these industries.

I'm a sound editor and from time to time I've toyed with sending certain extremely cretinous jobs to Mechanical Turk, things like cutting silence out of audio recordings (can't always automate this), identifying and synchronizing numerous takes, or going through a scene frame by frame and identifying every frame with a gunshot. It's technically possible but if your project is anything more complicated than the tiniest FunnyOrDie video you're going to be breaching the producer's confidence.

As information technology makes things like Mechanical Turk easier to implement, it makes the information you would send to MT all the more valuable and dangerous to release.