Leading breakthroughs in speech recognition software at Microsoft, Google, IBM

Groundbreaking work on speech recognition software by the University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science (DCS) is transforming Microsoft, Google and IBM. At a conference in Asia recently, Microsoft's Chief Research Officer demonstrated an almost instantaneous translation of spoken English to Chinese speech - with software that maintained the sound of the speaker's voice. It was the latest in a series of breakthroughs in the field involving U of'T faculty and students. "A few years ago, researchers at Microsoft Research and the University of Toronto came together to develop another breakthrough in the field of speech recognition," Rick Rashid told the crowd. "The idea that they had was to use a technology in a way patterned after the way the human brain works - it's called deep neural networks. "That one change, that particular breakthrough increased recognition rates by approximately thirty percent. That's a big deal." The breakthrough involves better recognition by the computer of what are called phonemes - small units of sound that comprise speech - and it has led to a reduction in errors by the computer, said Rashid.