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The Business of Speech Technologies

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Springer Handbook of Speech Processing

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Abstract

With the fast pace of developments of communications networks and devices, immediate and easy access to information and services is now the expected norm. Several critical technologies have entered the marketplace as key enablers to help make this a reality. In particular, speech technologies, such as speech recognition and natural language understanding, have changed the landscape of how services are provided by businesses to consumers forever. In 30 short years, speech has progressed from an idea in research laboratories across the world, to a multibillion-dollar industry of software, hardware, service hosting, and professional services. Speech is now almost ubiquitous in cell phones. Yet, the industry is still very much in its infancy with its focus being on simple low hanging fruit applications of the technologies where the current state of technology actually fits a specific market need, such as voice enabling of call center services or voice dialing over a cell phone.

With broadband access to networks (and therefore data), anywhere, anytime, and using any device, almost a reality, speech technologies will continue to be essential for unlocking the potential that such access provides. However, to unlock this potential, advances in basic speech technologies beyond the current state of the art are essential. In this chapter, we review the business of speech technologies and its development since the 1980s. How did it start? What were the key inventions that got us where we are, and the services innovations that supported the industry over the past few decades? What are the future trends on how speech technologies will be used? And what are the key technical challenges researchers must address and resolve for the industry to move forward to meet this vision of the future? This chapter is by no means meant to be exhaustive, but it gives the reader an understanding of speech technologies, the speech business, and areas where continued technical invention and innovation will be needed before the ubiquitous use of speech technologies can be seen in the marketplace.

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Abbreviations

ARPA:

Advanced Research Projects Agency

ART:

advanced recognition technology

ASR:

automatic speech recognition

ATIS:

airline travel information system

BBN:

Bolt, Beranek and Newman

CE:

categorical estimation

CMU:

Carnegie Mellon University

DARPA:

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

DM:

dialog management

DP:

dynamic programming

DSP:

digital signal processing

DT:

discriminative training

DTW:

dynamic time warping

FFT:

fast Fourier transform

GMM:

Gaussian mixture model

HMIHY:

How May I Help You

HMM:

hidden Markov models

IP:

internet protocol

IVR:

interactive voice response

LDA:

linear discriminant analysis

LPC:

linear predictive coding

MCE:

minimum classification error

MLLR:

maximum-likelihood linear regression

MMI:

maximum mutual information

NLU:

natural language understanding

PDA:

pitch determination algorithms

SDC:

shifted delta cepstral

SLM:

statistical language model

SMS:

speaker model synthesis

SVM:

support vector machines

TI:

transinformation index

UE:

user experience

VRCP:

voice recognition call processing

VTLN:

vocal-tract-length normalization

VoIP:

voice over IP

XML:

extensible mark-up languages

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Voice and IP Services, Research AT& T Labs, 07932, Florham Park, NJ, USA

    Jay Wilpon

  2. AT& T Labs, Inc., Research, 180 Park Ave., 07932, Florham Park, NJ, USA

    Mazin E. Gilbert

  3. SRI International, 300 Ravenswood Drive, 94019, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Jordan Cohen Ph.D

Authors
  1. Jay Wilpon
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  2. Mazin E. Gilbert
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  3. Jordan Cohen Ph.D
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jay Wilpon , Mazin E. Gilbert or Jordan Cohen Ph.D .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. INRS-EMT, University of Quebec, 800 de la Gauchetiere Ouest, H5A 1K6, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Jacob Benesty Dr.

  2. Avayalabs Research, 233 Mount Airy Road, 07920, Basking Ridge, NJ, USA

    M. Mohan Sondhi Ph.D.

  3. Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Laboratories, 600 Mountain Avenue, 07974, Murray Hill, NJ, USA

    Yiteng Arden Huang Dr.

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Wilpon, J., Gilbert, M.E., Cohen, J. (2008). The Business of Speech Technologies. In: Benesty, J., Sondhi, M.M., Huang, Y.A. (eds) Springer Handbook of Speech Processing. Springer Handbooks. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-49127-9_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-49127-9_34

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-49125-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49127-9

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