HEY Siri, we saw you coming. In our 17 March 1990 issue, we wrote about a computer system that could recognise continuous speech and may, we predicted, 鈥渇orm the basis of a personal computer controlled by voice鈥�.
At the time, this intriguing new technology had already piqued the interest of Apple, which we then described as 鈥渇amous for its MacIntosh range of personal computers controlled with a 鈥榤ouse鈥� which moves a pointer around the screen to select various icons鈥�. The company had spent several months collaborating with a research team at the University of Edinburgh, UK, to create a new system named Osprey.
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The technology consisted of two standard computer boards that were plugged into the back of an IBM personal computer. 鈥淭he first converts the voice signal into a digital form and then analyses the signal to pick out the key frequencies of speech,鈥� we reported. 鈥淚n this simplified form the signal is passed to the second board. This holds four transputers, self-contained computers which combine processing, memory and communications on a single piece of silicon.鈥�
The transputer board then converted the important frequencies into components of speech called phonemes. There are 44 of these in the English language. Osprey had a working vocabulary of just 300 words, which its developers said could be tailored to any situation.
鈥淭he developers of the system claim it can understand any voice speaking clearly in English. It is reasonably successful with urban Scottish, they added, and they are currently working on additional software which will improve its understanding of regional accents,鈥� we wrote.
While voice control has improved drastically since Osprey was developed, many of today鈥檚 popular voice assistants continue to have problems understanding certain accents or dialects that are under-represented in the data sets on which they are trained.
In 1990, Jeremy Peckham, who was then head of the speech unit at British IT firm Logica, told 快猫短视频 that speech control of computers would be much slower than using Apple鈥檚 mouse and icons. Thirty years later, Apple鈥檚 voice assistant Siri and equivalents from the likes of Amazon and Google sit in many of our pockets and homes, ready to respond rapidly to any command.
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