Talk to Your Gadget- The Rational Way

Talk to Your Gadget the Rational Way.

- Shreya Bhattacharya

Scene 1: A day back in the 90's or in the early 2000's when a person talking to a machine in public was plainly declared insane and taken straight to the asylum!

Scene 2: Today’s date… technologically and logically acceptable person talking to the witty virtual assistant on his smartphone while completely ignoring people around him.

Today, we have reached to an advanced technologically influenced time when almost every major software platform now has voice recognition in one form or another, be it virtual assistants or mere dictation. We have achieved a lot on how we speak to our smart gadgets now. But are we really there yet?

We’re talking more. But why? Before we really delve into the quality of digital assistants and voice recognition on different platforms, we need to stop and take stock of what really facilitates the current state of this technology. At a broad overview level, everything from better audio formats to higher quality microphones have helped in making digital voice interaction a valid and acceptable option. But the technology wasn’t really waiting for those parts – let’s say hardware, processing power, software, and specifically AI as the virtual assistant.

Although these innovations are quite significant, let us not forget that necessity is the mother of invention. In the past years, the devices that can handle voice interaction have not only been limited to phones and computers. A lot more categories have been included into “smart” devices, including smart watches, smart homes and smart cars. Each of these platforms has different configurations, and hence need a system complicated yet reliable enough to function optimally with them.