Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000530030439.00b3bf00@127.0.0.1>
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 03:21:41 -0400
To: Lojban Listserver <lojban@egroups.com>
Subject: Re: [lojban] speech recognition
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.21.0005291836160.22755-100000@reva.sixgirls.org >
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From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>
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At 06:38 PM 05/29/2000 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
>Every 4 months there is a flurry of interest concerning Lojban speech
>recognition. IBM's ViaVoice gets mentioned, and folks are directed to read
>the archives. Then there's complete silence on the idea until the next
>spate.
>
>Does anything of value ever get done on this front?

Not recalling the Via Voice thing, there probably won't be results of value 
until someone has money to throw at the problem.  It might not take a lot 
of money as computer applications go to get meaningful progress, but it 
isn't a weekend hack job either.  At one point, I think Mark Mandel of 
Dragon Systems said that for $50K we could have something comparable to the 
work they did on Klingon speech recognition.

When we need special hardware and/or software, and/or a small but 
significant amount of money, I have been told that this is where we should 
use our status as a small technological non-profit to go up to the 
appropriate corporations and ask for what we need as a grant or donation 
(at the time, it was by a Sun employee right after Sparc stations first 
came out, who said that we could probably get one for free for our work if 
we could come up with a plausible reason why we needed one - I couldn't, 
unfortunately).  But this whole arena is something I have no personal 
experience with, and thus far we have never identified any single 
application with specific enough needs that we would know what to ask for 
anyway.

If someone with some interest in this area wants to do the work, can 
prepare a concept and proposal and wants to contact a possible corporate 
donor under my authorization, that would likely be the best way to 
proceed.  But as long it remains a question that stops at "read the 
archives", it will remain an archives issue.

(I will note that this is something that Nora is personally interested in, 
but she has no expertise in any technology more recent than 1988 for doing 
it, and of course she has little time for Lojban and a backlog of 
commitments - she is still trying to get LogFlash 2 done so people can be 
using it before LogFest.  Maybe if people interested do some research this 
can be a topic of discussion at LogFest, since I think you've said you 
intend to come, xod.)

lojbab
--
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                    703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org