Speech Recognition Remains one of Bill Gate's Hot Buttons

In an interview with Time published yesterday, Bill Gates was questioned about Microsoft's ability innovate. In his response to the question, Gates specifically mentions speech recognition, among other things.

Microsoft has pumped a lot of $$ into speech technology R&D, there is no question about it. Whether or not Microsoft benefits from this ongoing R&D investment in a big way is not exactly clear, but there is no question that the speech industry at large benefits substantially. Microsoft's investment and evangelizing speech technology serves to acquaint more and more people with the technology which helps establish and nurture growing market.

Consider for instance, the impact of bundling speech technology into Vista. Regardless of what you think of Microsoft speech technology, this will be a significant development. Basically within 3-4 years 90% of the desktop PC's will likely be speech-enabled with adequate speech recognition and synthesis technologies as a platform feature, NOT an optional add-on package. Sure, you get Microsoft's speech technology when you install Office 2003, but not everybody has Office, or even if they do user's don't necessarily have that component installed or configured. With Vista, the speech technology will simply be there to take advantage of. Developers targetting applications for Windows Vista will be more inclined to utilize the technology, since 1) they can depend on it being there and 2) they can assume people are more familiar with it and more likely to utilize it.

The bottom line is that in the near future, consumers will not just be encountering speech technology via IVR applications when they call their bank, but speech technology will be intimately integrated into their everyday experiences as they interact with their computers and mobile phones. Speech interfaces will no longer be a novelty that quickly become annoying (and abandoned) but a fundamental ingredient in the human-machine interface.

Read the Gates Interview with Time.