Text, Speech and Dialogue

Where have we been and where are we going? Three types of answers will be discussed: consistent progress, oscillations and discontinuities. Moore’s Law provides a convincing demonstration of consistent progress, when it applies. Speech recognition error rates are declining by 10× per decade; speech coding rates are declining by 2× per decade. Unfortunately, fields do not always move in consistent directions. Empiricism dominated the field in the 1950s, and was revived again in the 1990s. Oscillations between Empiricism and Rationalism may be inevitable, with the next revival of Rationalism coming in the 2010s, assuming a 40-year cycle. Discontinuities are a third logical possibility. From time to time, there will be fundamental changes that invalidate fundamental assumptions. As petabytes become a commodity (in the 2010s), old apps like data entry (dictation) will be replaced with new priorities like data consumption (search).