Oscillogram Credit: Brechtje Post
For generations, we have dreamed of machines with artificial intelligence with which we can have real conversations but, despite amazing technological advances, such devices seem some way off. Now researchers at Cambridge are changing the picture, by remodelling the essence of spoken dialogue systems. —Professor Steve Young - Following the death of Steve Jobs, one of many videos which started to circulate widely on the internet showed the Apple Co-founder at a watershed moment, launching the very first Macintosh in 1984. After demonstrating the machine's facility for word processing, design and even animation, the climax came when Macintosh literally announced itself to the world, talking to an amazed audience with synthetic speech before handing back to Jobs and announcing that it was going to "sit back and listen". A beaming Jobs received a five-minute ovation. How far we seem to have travelled. Modern smartphones are pocket computers that talk to us using speech recognition software, and owners of an Apple iPhone 4S can ask their device about the weather, or tell it to text a friend.
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