You said it, Bob: The times they sure are a’changing Opinion:
It was great to see Bob Dylan getting the Nobel prize for literature last week. Dylan won the prize for having created new poetic expressions within the ‘‘great American song tradition’’.
In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy noted that Dylan was probably the greatest living poet. High praise indeed and the sort of thing that is fizzy enough to get up the nose of a lot of observers. Celebrated author Norman Mailer, for example, once noted in a stinging retort ‘‘if Dylan’s a poet, then I’m a basketball player’’.
Regardless of how you choose to box him up, Dylan’s innovative fusion of the likes of Jack Kerouac, Chuck Berry and Woody Guthrie fundamentally changed how voice was harnessed and recognised.
How voice is harnessed and recognised is also changing business, from voice recognition customer processing to vocal fingerprints and voice biometrics being used by banks.
An interesting local datapoint here is how the Inland Revenue Department pioneered the use of voice in its client relationship management.
In the early days it was pretty ropy; I remember repeating the same phrase many times before it finally recognised what I was saying. Two weeks ago I had reason to use it again and was surprised how good it was.
With a moderately complex foreign tax credit inquiry, it followed a logical path and got me through to Chris in the Waikato call centre who was exactly the right man for the job, and got things sussed. Meanwhile, in the internet world voice is going gangbusters.
If you’ve got an iPhone then you’ve probably met Siri – Apple’s Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface.
Not so long ago Siri was something you fired up after having a few too many drinks at a dinner party, asked it questions and entertained everyone with the ludicrous answers it gave after
Voice recognition will soon be the dominant way we interact with our online devices.
failing to interpret you properly.
Today it’s pretty damned slick, with all locally bought iPhones having a Kiwi accent tweak implemented so it no longer confuses kodiak bears with cold beers. Likewise, Google’s voice search has improved manifold. Originally released back in 2011 it was famously inaccurate and relegated to being a plaything of the chief Googlers Page and Brin.
A year ago they souped it up with recurrent neural networks, smart tech that recognises and categorises the natural flow of language. And it got faster. A lot faster.
Whereas voice search on Google used to take about three seconds to respond, it’s now down to about a second. The accuracy is astounding. As I wrote this column it managed to find my flights to Queenstown, the valve clearances on a Moto Guzzi 1200 and Iggy Pop’s birthday.
All of this – along with Facebook’s recent acquisition of a 6000-person voice recognition company – prompted KPCB’s Mary Meeker to devote a big part of her latest legendary ‘‘Internet Trends’’ report to voice computing.
Meeker notes that currently the likes of Google and Baidu have around 95 per cent accuracy with voice recognition, but that once they hit 99 per cent it will be an absolute game-changer.
Quoting Baidu’s chief scientist, by 2020 it’s expected at least half of all searches will be via voice or image. That’s just three years away. The disruptive potential here is huge. Having voice as the dominant computer interface means digital life becomes hands and vision-free, fundamentally changing the game.
Voice will be able to do everything you currently control with a desktop or an app, from home heating to ordering pizzas to booking flights to filing your GST.
It also unbundles the internet from keyboards and the written word, literally giving the disenfranchised digital voice.
Amazon’s already sighted this wave and is surfing it, from its Amazon Fresh ‘‘dash’’ wand which allows you to yell out shopping list items as you realise you need them, to its Alexa voice platform.
Alexa powers Echo – an in-home digital speaker you control with your voice. In 2014 Echo delivered shopping lists, in 2015 it expanded to reordering past purchases by voice, and now it allows you to order new items.
If you needed any more proof of the disruption in store, three months ago Alexasite won the Disrupt New York Hackathon. Alexasite lets designers change and update websites just by voice commands, and in doing so suddenly put a bunch of people out of work.
One of Dylan’s best songs is Subterranean Homesick Blues. It features the great line ‘‘you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind’s blowing’’.
Just as Dylan’s voice changed the direction of music, the digital spoken word will change the direction of the internet.
The question is, will it leave you behind? If you’ve got an app that doesn’t work via voice, if you’ve got a business that relies on on-screen advertising around search, or if you’ve got a company that preys on the disenfranchised, then you’d better start working on a plan B. Mike ‘‘MOD’’ O’Donnell is an e-commerce manager and a professional director. His Twitter handle is @modsta and he reckons is the best Bob Dylan album.