Newsmaker: Gates still finding his voice

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And I imagine that's going to be a huge change in video search, for example. Today when we have video searches, you are basically searching keywords of the Internet page that surrounds the video, the description, that sort of thing. When we start using voice recognition to search within the videos, we'll have a much more powerful experience, right?
Gates: Yeah, that will help a lot. Microsoft Research has some amazing demos around that. In terms of broadcast videos, of course, there's the requirement that there be the text annotation. So if you have that, you actually have the speech-to-text that has been done for the deaf listener, anybody who wants the captioning-type capability. So there's a lot of video out there where if you ingest it in the right way, that's available. For the bottoms-up video, or just a meeting you have in the business, then you're relying on the speech recognition software to make it easy to navigate.

What are some of the areas where you see voice going that people aren't necessarily thinking about today?
Gates: To me, voice is in the broad realm of natural interface. And natural interface is (the notion of) screens everywhere--screen in your desk, screen in your tables, screen on your walls, no more white boards, touching, which is like Surface, where you can manipulate things. It's a pen so you can have ink wherever you want. You know, pull up an article, write a little note on it and get it sent off to a friend.

The speech recognition comes into it--all these things about natural interface are coming to the fore, and they are probably the thing that's most underestimated right now about the digital revolution. People kind of gasp when they see how touch works on Surface, when they touch their iPhone then, "Ooooh, wow," you know, that's just such a natural thing.

When voice recognition is used in the right way--let's say you're in the car and you want to pick somebody to call--that's improved very dramatically, or speech output, text to speech, these things have gotten very good.

You talked about different natural language interfaces. You know, with multitouch, it seems to have really captured people's imaginations, both with what you guys have shown with Surface, certainly with the iPhone. Voice seems to be a little slower in terms of speech recognition as a mainstream computer interface.
Gates: Well, that's fair. Voice recognition is a harder thing. There are certainly tons of people, and I mean millions, who for some reason, the keyboard's not attractive to them. Either they have repetitive stress injury, or they're in a work environment where they're doing something else with their hands, where they've taken the time to learn the software and adapt to the software and gone through the training process there. And they love it. They can't believe other people don't use it.

When you sell a product to hundreds of millions of users, there are features that millions of users love that you can call an obscure feature because, percentage wise, it's not very many.

For the rest of us, the keyboard has worked so well that we are even getting the keyboard into phones. I think voice search on the phone is one of those applications that would really drive it forward. I mean, why should I have to try and type something in? I've got a phone, I've got a talk button; so that's one of the areas we're betting on.

You guys built a pretty significant voice recognition engine into Vista. It hardly gets talked about. Are you surprised that some of the things you did in Vista aren't getting more attention?
Gates: Well, when you sell a product to hundreds of millions of users, there are features that millions of users love that you can call an obscure feature because, percentage wise, it's not very many. You know, Butler Lampson, one of our great researchers who has done great work going all the way back to his days at Xerox, was just sending me mail about how fantastic the improvements in the speech stuff are in Vista and, you know, we're hard at work on the next version of Windows. We're going to take this speech stuff even further.

What about in the developing world? I imagine natural language input, you know, particularly for people who've never used a computer, has some really interesting applications.
Gates: I wouldn't go too far on that because they're not used to what the dialogue should be like, and in most of those places, the cost of labor is low enough that, you (can) have another person on the other end of the connection or talking to them directly. But, yeah, it should work for different languages. It's particularly interesting for Japanese and Chinese where the keyboard is not as natural as it is for languages with modest-sized alphabets. And so we do see ink and voice catching on there.

There was a demo recently where there was a challenge about typists compared with voice recognition, and the voice recognition won out by quite a bit. And so there's a lot that can be done pioneering off of the demand that will come out of those markets.

You've talked a fair amount about taking on just a few projects when you step away from full-time work. Is natural language input and voice one of those areas you think you'll be spending time on?
Gates: Yeah. I'd say, broadly, the whole natural interface thing. Big screens, touch, ink, speech, that's something that I think, along with cloud computing, is the next big change in how we think about software and how it becomes more basic. And, you know, Ray Ozzie is driving our cloud computing stuff and--way ahead of me, very hands-on all that stuff. Some of the natural interface stuff, I think he and Steve will ask me to sort of keep the energy and vision alive there in a strong way. Some of that will be reading off the screen or the tablet, but the whole natural interface area probably will be one that they'll pick.

Any others that you think you will take on?
Gates: Well, it's hard to say. Search is such a fun area right now. They might pick that. There are some ideas about where the Office software should go--I'm really quite enthused about some things. So I'd say those are the three most likely. And it's only going to be three or four, so--they'll have to decide.  

More Newsmakers

[yacahuma]

Mr Gates

Mr Gates, Microsoft is no longer a software company but a marketing one. By building 5(are there more) of the new OS, that doesnt really do anything new, it shows that a marketing person not a software person is in charge of Microsoft. Only a sales person will be STUPID enough to come up with that idea. Please STOP pretending Microsoft is a software company. MS lost its MOJO a long time ago.

[FutureGuy]

you lost yours

MS is not a software company?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_software_applications

and this doesnot include entertainment related software like XBox live.

[rthutchison]

Dude

you are making no sense

[yacahuma]

dude...

Dude look at what Microsoft is doing. You have 5 different vista versions. You have 8, I repeat, 8 office versions. The professional office version does not includes Outlook, even if most businesses use outlook.

Please tell me who is NOT MAKING SENSE???

All these are MARKETING DECISIONS.

So basically a marketing group at MS is making the decision of what a software product should be. Forget if it make sense or not.

Do you see the problem HERE?? The decisions are not based by anyone?s needs. The decisions are made based on how much money they can get out of one product taking into considerations that everyone will need the most expensive versions since the least expensive serve no one.

I am not saying MS should not make money. That's the whole purpose of having a business. But there should be a balance.

Is this the company you want to keep promoting?

People like me fill betray by what they are doing.

[Lee in San Diego]

Not yet?

His voice still hasn't changed! Might explain why he doesn't have a
beard :)

[FO-FI_FO_454]

HOWEVER, THIS SHALL BE THE FUTURE OF CORPORATE TELEPHONY.

Bill Gates is right, right on target, however, being a Proper Gentleman, a Worldly Man, a husband, a parent and loving son, this is what he is NOT telling you. How do I know all of this, well, I've been there, done that, and my favorite tune is from "Fiddler on the Roof" - Tevya (portrayed by Zero Mostel) sings "If I Was A Rich Man - deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle doooooo!" Let's get rolling with this preview of Voice Recognition, as it might be employed 20 years (or sooner if censorship rules are relaxed) from now.

But wait - do I like voice recognizion? I LOVE IT! Why? Like Rex Harrison's character (the speech therapist) and Audrey Hepburn's character (the street urchin....GO WANNNNNNNNNN)in one of my top 10 all time MUST SEE movies (available on DVD....SEARCH IT, GO WANNNNNNNN do some work)I now speak "PROPERLY" when addressing my AT&T Telephone device. With a pronounced NEW YAWK accent, coupled with my Brooklynese upbringing, I speak today at age 73 just like I used to speak when I was 23 years old. BUT WAIT - with Voice Recognition, I speak PROPERLY to the voice in the device that TALKS TO ME, PROPERLY. The end result is that when I'm done with Telephony Voice Recognition sessions, my neighbors don't understand me....after all, I'm now, A PROPER MAN. I dig it - it's as though I've been taken back to my childhood, Public School, and am being taught all over again, HOW TO SPEAK CLEARLY AND DISTINCTLY in my preferred language which is English. Abd then, I change my colostomy bag - what is eally important today, my LIFE or learning how to speak all over again?

It's a cool way to reduce administrative costs, add functionality to a telephone without the risk of the caller or recipient of the call "LOSING IT - GOING PHCUCKING NUTS and SCREAMING.

Some negative comments: For those of you that are afflicted with a Cleft Pallet, or LISP, voice recognition PSUCKS (the P is (p)silent)....think about that for a while. For those of you that just had a tooth pulled, root canal, and have a mouth full of cotton balls, and MUST CALL YOUR BANK - get a stooge to do it for you, because ain't no way voice recognition is going to help you. Can you understand - you must speak PROPERLY to a ROBOT, unless you are in the year 2027 or sooner when we will have these options:
1. The Howard Stern Voice Recognition Telephone system. Say whatever the PHCUCK you want - and you have the option of selecting a Voice Recognition genre, so taht the Robot talks back to you the way you prefer to be spoken to...undertand.
2. The Penthouse Voice Recognition Telephone system. I'm not referring to Donald Trump's PENTHOUSE but rather to a gentleman who has the first name Larry....his last name rhyme's with Clint.
3. With the influx of more cross border and foreign visitors to this nation, Voice Recognition Telephony will offer a wide variety of languages. Think about that for a moment - there's an emergency, you have to make a phone call, in ENGLISH, the robot answers and goes through the drill, offers you 200 languages, plus dialects to select before you can shout "FIRE FIRE FIRE - HELP HELP HELP - NOW NOW NOW."

Yes indeed, proper people must portray themselves at all times as being PROPER....just like Rex Harrison in that infamous ALL TIME GREAT MOVIE with Audrey Hepburn. Personally, I'm a PROPER PERSON TOO, just like Tevya, James Dean, Marlon Brando, Joey Bishop, Buddy Hackett, Milton Berle, and Howard Stern.....we tell it like it is, PROPERLY, but also funnier.

Thank you for this opportunity to Talkback, and have a wonderful weekend.

[aaydogan]

Penthouse is not published by Larry Flynt....

...it is published by Bob Guccione...I just don't know what to say
about the rest.....

[matthewcsims]

I don't know about that.

Some customer service centers, like my cell phone company, already have voice recognition software, and I don?t like using it. It is not because it doesn?t work. It usually works fine for me, but it is not human. I don?t mind talking to a human like a human. It does make me uncomfortable talking to a computer as if it were human. I don?t know why, it just does. Some people have conversations with their plants. I talk to my dog. Don?t make me talk to your fichus, and I won?t make you talk to my dog, I guess.

But in my house, voice recognition is going nowhere. When I bring home my new computer, with that spiffy voice recognition software, my girlfriend and I will use it for about 20 minutes, talking about how cool it is. Then she will say, ?Ok, I?m going to watch TV now.? Ok, I will just play on the net. About five minutes of me voicing out every Google request my girlfriend says, ?Hey I am trying to watch TV!!! Why don?t you shut the?.? Know what I mean?

Just imagine what it would sound like in an office.

Then there are the inherent security implications for people that will voice out their email password to their laptop while out in public. But invention never really stops to think I guess.

I also don?t want computerized walls or screens all over. Like refrigerators with web browsers built in. I am sorry, but I just don?t get that.

[zgreenwell]

Sounds like they're on target

Simplifying the user interface to something that is more practical sounds great. I personally would love to see a greater implementation of speech recognition and touch controls. Also, "cloud computing" is a great thing that I hope gets developed more too. It would be great if cell phone companies would jump on the and back up my contacts "in the clouds". That way if I lost my phone I could still get the information. I feel the same way about computer back ups. There is no reason why I can't do that now.

[JRFeeney]

Yeah, right.

If Microsoft is in charge of the computing community, we will never get there. Oh, it will look pretty and have all kinds of feel good bells and whistles but it will amount to a POS.