When a demo goes very bad
This post was published 3 years 3 months 25 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.While perusing some of the hot headlines on Digg, I stumbled upon the following link which managed to put a sinister grin on my face. While demoing the speech recognition software on Vista, Microsoft product manager Shanen Boettcher encountered a bit of a translation error.
Several tries at making the computer understand the simple salutation “Dear Mom� was read by Microsoft software as “Dear Aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all.� Attempts to correct or undo or delete the error only deepened the mess
How can an operating system make such a mistake? Two simple words transformed into a jumbled sentence?
Vista, I can’t wait to play around with the speech recognition software. How bad would “Cute puppy” be butchered?
This phrase will appear on a T-shirt in 3… 2… 1…
and theres a video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123221217782777472
The description of the error is misleading, if you watch the video maljc linked. The Microsoft rep says “Dear Mom,” and the computer displays “Dear Aunt.” The rest of the ridiculous sentence is the software slowly misunderstanding the rep’s attempts to correct the first mistake. You’re right, though, Derek, that this software seems only ready to use for the entertainment of it getting what you say totally wrong!