Microsoft has created a robot that reaches "human parity". Critics are saying it to be a historic achievement for Microsoft and a huge step in the field of artificial intelligence.
According to The Telegraph, the Windows giant, Microsoft, has created a computer program that can understand human speech as well as a person can. The company's chief speech scientist, Xuedong Huang, claims that the company's speech recognition software has reached human parity, where the software is capable of transcribing human speech with the same or a fewer number of errors than of a person.
A Breakthrough In Artificial Intelligence
In the battle to create an accurate speech recognition software, many companies and technology giants such as Google and Amazon are locked head-to-head, and currently, Microsoft is in the lead and is a step ahead. Microsoft was proud to announce that their latest speech recognition software holds the "lowest ever recorded" error rate in the industry standard recognition test, thus making their success as a "historic achievement".
Harry Shum, head if Microsoft's A.I. research department is still in a state of disbelief from their success. He stated that Microsoft's speech recognition team has been researching how to generate human parity for more than 20 years now, and even 5 years ago, never has it come to cross his mind that they will be able to achieve the feat. Shum also stated that the software will be used to enhance Microsoft's intelligent assistant Cortana's understanding of voice command to make a more powerful and truly intelligent assistant as possible.
According to The Verge, Microsoft stated that their speech recognition software is still far from completion. Microsoft still needs to tune the technology to work as will with conversations in a wider range of more challenging real life situations and with a broader selection of voices. In the case of software similar to Cortana, it is important for artificial intelligence to understand the meaning of words and act on them, not just accurately hear them.
The Surging A.I. Revolution
With this current trend of machines seemingly starting to become more human, it appears that the evolution of machines is starting to become a lot more progressive. Thus, it might seem that in the near future, A.I. might very well exceed human limits when it comes to evolution.
While this scenario is exactly what science-fiction movies are made of, the current trends in the A.I. field, as shown by Microsoft in its recent breakthrough, seems to fuel the very speculation of an upcoming machine revolution. While a real A.I. revolution might not involve iconic machines such as the T-1000, it would, undoubtedly, change the life of people forever.
Machines are becoming more human, and the more human they become, the thinner the line that separates them from humans would be. Considering these new developments, it appears that this is indeed the goal of current IT leaders such as Microsoft and Google.
