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A Baidu voice recognition program has outclassed humans that were typing using smartphone on-screen keyboards:
Computers have already beaten us at chess, Jeopardy and Go, the ancient board game from Asia. And now, in the raging war with machines, human beings have lost yet another battle — over typing. Turns out voice recognition software has improved to the point where it is significantly faster and more accurate at producing text on a mobile device than we are at typing on its keyboard. That's according to a new study by Stanford University, the University of Washington and Baidu, the Chinese Internet giant. The study ran tests in English and Mandarin Chinese.
Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng says this should not feel like defeat. "Humanity was never designed to communicate by using our fingers to poke at a tiny little keyboard on a mobile phone. Speech has always been a much more natural way for humans to communicate with each other," he says.
Researchers set up a competition, pitting a Baidu program called Deep Speech 2 against 32 humans, ages 19 to 32. The humans took turns saying and then typing short phrases into an iPhone — like "buckle up for safety" and "wear a crown with many jewels" and "this person is a disaster." They found the voice recognition software was three times faster.
Speech Is 3x Faster than Typing for English and Mandarin Text Entry on Mobile Devices (abstract) and full paper (pdf).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @12:29AM
Unless you're touch typing with all ten fingers on a full-sized touch keyboard, tapping does not count as typing. Tapping with one finger doesn't even count as hunting-and-pecking. When I was a child, before I learned to type correctly, I naturally used one finger from each hand, because I didn't need to hold the keyboard with one hand like I'm doing right now. Yes that's right, I'm tapping on a mobile device right now, and I'm very much aware that I could shout these words faster, but I doubt the people around me would appreciate it. If I were not in a coffee shop now, I would be using a real keyboard instead.
Tiny touch keyboards aren't even properly futuristic. Watch Babylon 5 sometime, pay attention to the officers who aren't shouting questions at the computer for dramatic effect, and you will see full-sized backlit touch keyboards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @12:38AM
typing: noun
the action or skill of writing something by means of a typewriter or computer.
"they learned shorthand and typing"
writing produced by typing.
"five pages of typing"
Nuff said so stop being pedantic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @12:51AM
The pedantic distinction was explained in the comment, if you would read more than the subject. Tiny tapping keyboards are too small for ten finger typing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @04:51AM
I guess a strongly typed message is really hard on a keyboard...bent keys and all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @02:05AM
If I were not in a coffee shop now, I would be using a real keyboard instead.
When I go to coffee shops I bring a real keyboard [wikimedia.org] along. Why settle?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @03:12AM
Oh, steampunk! Right, I remember that trend. It happened for, like, ten seconds back in 2000-and-are-you-kidding-me? Dude, seriously, you're sitting in a public place tap-tap-tapping on an oldie typewriter? [wikiquote.org] What are you? In The League of Extraordinarily Pretentious Gentlemen?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 26 2016, @06:27AM
That's not a real keyboard. That [wikimedia.org] is a real keyboard. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 26 2016, @06:22AM
I don't touch-type. But I'm still at least an order of magnitude faster on a real keyboard (even on a crappy one) than on a touch screen "keyboard".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @06:15PM
Unless you're touch typing with all ten fingers on a full-sized touch keyboard, tapping does not count as typing.
Then according to you zillions of people around the world are "tapping" on their computer keyboards and not typing.
Seems to me your definition is wrong or at least not useful.