Slashdot Mirror
The Speakularity, Where Everything You Say Is Transcribed and Searchable
An anonymous reader sends an article from Nautilus about the possible future of speech recognition software. Today, hundreds of millions of people are walking around with devices that can not only record sound, but also do a decent job of turning spoken word into searchable text. The article makes the case that the recording and transcription of normal conversation will become commonplace, sooner or later. Not only would this potentially make a lot more interesting discussion available beyond earshot, but it could also facilitate information retrieval on a personal level.
The article makes an analogy with email — right now, if you communicated with somebody through email a decade ago, you don't have to remember the specifics — as long as you didn't delete it or switch email providers, you can just search and look at exactly what was said. Of course, the power of such technology comes with trade-offs — not only would we be worried about the obvious privacy issues, but many people may feel restricted by always "performing" for the microphones. Some researchers also worry that if we have technology to remember for us, we'll put much less effort into remembering things ourselves.
The article makes an analogy with email — right now, if you communicated with somebody through email a decade ago, you don't have to remember the specifics — as long as you didn't delete it or switch email providers, you can just search and look at exactly what was said. Of course, the power of such technology comes with trade-offs — not only would we be worried about the obvious privacy issues, but many people may feel restricted by always "performing" for the microphones. Some researchers also worry that if we have technology to remember for us, we'll put much less effort into remembering things ourselves.
Not everything that is technically feasible becomes commonplace. Despite increasingly clever marketing creating artificial demands, people still tend to have their own mind.
See, brother don't got no prob with no thang. Da man can't got no nut ten on a brother!
Damn!
Chump no un da Stan!
They're correct and it's too late, at least for me. I've been using email in this manner since around 2001 or so and have an entire archive of all of my email to back around 1997 or so. I haven't had to revisit 1997-2002, but I still maintain the archive. As for 2002-forward, I use it often to find something that I worked on for one employer or another through those years and will continue to do so. I don't feel there's a need to use brain cells to remember something that's at my finger tips and yes, I am aware, if the SHTF, I won't be able to retrieve everything in there.... the way I look at that, if the SHTF, I won't give a damn about some piece of information from 2002. /CF
haha. Wow. Tom Scott seems to have called it. Now all we need is Apple to come up with mini cameras in the earbuds.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
The decade ago email doesn't work. Over a few years and a few different email systems that you were using your email archive will become lost or unusable in that time frame.
So good luck with that.
Certainly would promote responsible speech (or at least greater caution)
Looking forward to this tech evening up arguments with my wife.
And I doubt it ever will be.
That's when the successors to Google glass not only deliver images to our eyes but also monitor them at the same time and record what we're looking at.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
If this is the future of humanity, then I can safely stop caring about the future of humanity, because I want no part of it.
If you use an email client for email, rather than a web browser, there's little reason you wouldn't have email from a decade ago handy. Unless you choose to delete the local copies, of course. What I do, is every year or two I make a subfolder under Sentbox, Sentbox/2012-213/ and drag the old emails there. Folders other than Sentbox and Trash generally don't get subfolders, "eBay receipts" has everything I've ever bought and sold on ebay.
Many people who use IMAP have it set to delete the local copies automatically, but there's no need to use that setting.
Well thanks to the wonders of OCR we can already google physical books and street views. So the next step would be to extend recognition technology from static objects to events, objects with the added dimension of time.
And how do we authenticate a speech transcript? Once this technology becomes commonplace -- and I'm convinced it will, at least in business and government/political circles -- then how much easier will it be to produce a "record" of a conversation with, say, the CEO of a big corporation that's been doctored to show s/he said something racist or that implicated the company in illegal activity? Faking an audio recording is vastly more difficult than faking a transcript; if this technology doesn't include authentication (and I have no idea how you could do that), then we're taking a huge step in the wrong direction.
It sounds crazy but are we really that far behind with always listening devices? Imagine brand recognition or "need fulfillment" services pinging off everything you say
"Man, it's hot out" translates into a device showing a Coke advert. I feel like this isn't far off
If you have not seen it, I would suggest watching Black Mirror TV series. Season 2 Episode 1 (usual wikipedia spoilers at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) is about similar subject - having devices which record everything you see and hear and being able to replay it all at any point.
>> having devices which record everything you see and hear
Those are called cell phones. And Windows 10 machines (soon to be backported to Windows 7/8).
>> being able to replay it all at any point
I think we know who already has those.
I have every email sent & received since '94, all in mbox format by year by email address. Easy to do and it comes in handy. Why not record conversations too!
"but many people may feel restricted by always "performing" for the microphones. "
You'd better already be that _today_. Not only the NSA listens, as we lately discovered, depending on where you live, half the time you are phoning over one of the police's illegal stingray 'cell-towers'.
So, don't talk about tax-evasion, drug orders or merchandise that 'fell off the truck' and so on.
Just think about a law suit where discovery has started. Anything that you had recorded and could be searched with be a record that the court could require you to produce. Talk about hanging yourself......
First Jive Dude: Shiiiiit, maaaaan. That honky muf' be messin' mah old lady... got to be runnin' cold upside down his head, you know? ...pray to J I did the same-ol', same-ol'! ...leg 'er down a smack 'em yak 'em!
Second Jive Dude: Hey home', I can dig it. Know ain't gonna lay no mo' big rap up on you, man!
First Jive Dude: I say hey, sky... subba say I wan' see...
Second Jive Dude: Uh-huh.
First Jive Dude:
Second Jive Dude: Hey... knock a self a pro, Slick! That gray matter backlot perform us DOWN, I take TCB-in', man!
First Jive Dude: Hey, you know what they say: see a broad to get dat booty yak 'em...
First Jive Dude, Second Jive Dude:
First Jive Dude: COL' got to be! Y'know?
First Jive Dude: Shiiiiit.
I can't say I've looked at anything older than about 3 years, but I do have it going back > 10 years - even though I have changed ISPs 4 times.
If you have a smartphone with you at all times, how do you know this isn't already happening?
After all, all that is needed is an open mike on your end - the other end can do all the transcribing and storage without you ever knowing about it!
Or it could lead to a severe barrier of communication.
It's already bad enough with the video clips of someone saying something embarrassing; this has already lead to many people in the public eye choosing their words so carefully as to say nothing at all. Politicians, for instance.
Imagine every word you speak being transcribed, recorded, stored, made searchable. Every single one.
People would speak less, communicate less, out of fear that something is going to be revealed or taken out of context and used as a weapon.
People who who welcome this kind of technology and want it to be a pervasive thing in our society are the same kinds of people who don't understand what it means to be human. The technophiles. "We can, so we should, what consequences?"
Tonight when I go to bed I will be thankful that there's one less day to live.
Can you imagine your wife/girlfriend having this technology ?
Your life would become hell on earth :)
If this becomes wide spread and available to everyone everywhere, we may finally come to peace with the fact that we're all hypocrites. I have come to the conclusion that pointing out someone else's hypocrisy is just a tool used for momentary one-up-manship.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Yeah, that just rolls off the tongue...
Don't quit your day job. Unless you're in marketing, in which case you should quit because you're terrible at it.
#DeleteChrome
you can just search and look at exactly what was said
Excepting Secretaries of State, of course.
I just aliased the reformat command to the word 'Benghazi'.
Have gnu, will travel.
Nowadays we wring our hands and tsk-tsk the loss of old film reels, books, and magazines, fearing the loss of part of our culture. In the future, people will yearn for the golden days of yore, when an inappropriate remark might elicit a titter of embarrassed laughter before vanishing into the fog of entropy.
the device in your pocket can record audio, but it doesn't transcribe it. the server on the other end does...
imagine the data usage if you're constantly streaming your babble at google/apple/M$. maybe when the thing in my pocket can do it alone.
NSA and FBI wet dream that is what it is. hell no, i will never allow that. Even if i did i can't even find an email from 6 months ago for something. Unless i tag it on the fly i would never find half of my stuff. the data would have to be auto tagged or organized properly. I do think there is software for that, but I don't think consumers are going to like the creepy feel of searching every word you ever spoke..
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
Truth and honesty are areas that we will have more and more trouble with. People really do not want openes as most feel that they are the ones who will suffer if exposed.
Not going to happen. Powerful people in the business community regularly use phone instead of email to say things that they cannot say over email. They will never change to recording everything. They will change to recording *certain* things in a different way.