Tom Freeman

Sr. Vice President & Co- Founder

VoiceBox Technologies, Inc.

Copyright © 2001-2006 VoiceBox Technologies, Inc

The Four Elements ofConversational Speech

The Problem

• When speech interfaces actually work, they require learning on the part of the user

• Users ‘dumb down’ requests to the ‘irreducible minimum’

The Promise

• Immediate accessibility for ALL systems

• Never have to learn a system again

• Human-Machine interactions that feel ‘normal’

The Risk

• Without a clear definition of “Conversational”

The word ‘Conversational’ will be subject to:

• Exploitation• Disillusionment• Ultimately consumer cynicism

Conversational Speech

Four Elements– Casual Speech– Noise Tolerance– Intent Determination & Hypothesis Building– Cooperative Conversations™

Casual Speech

Features•Free Form Utterance

– Typical day-to-day language– Tolerant of infinitely variable human Emotional states, distractions and

serendipity

•One Step Access and Directed Dialogue– Complex and multi-variant queries

•Intent Inference– Completion from incomplete utterance

•Recognition of Expression Variants– Widely flexible action words

•Start, Stop, Restart, Stutter & Run-ons– Verbalized pauses and restarts

Noise Tolerance

• Meaningless words – Out of vocabulary words

• Removal on non-human noise

• Out-of-context words

Intent Determination &Hypothesis Building

• Inference of Intended operations from last

Command

• Multiple Words in Combination help reveal

Context– What about Traffic?

80s Rock and Roll Band

Direction to O’Hare

Review of Michael Douglas Movies

Cooperative Conversation™

• Creates a holistic Voice User Experience (VUE™)• Delivers on the promise of Conversational Language processing• A perceived successful conversation with a machine

Regardless of:length of timenumber of steps

Cooperative Conversation™

The parts:

1) Shared Knowledgea) Long Term

b) Short Term

2) Hypothesis Building / Intent Determination

3) Adaptive Responses

1) Shared Knowledge

Short Term – ‘session’ knowledge

current & recent recognition events

Long Term – ‘user-centric’ knowledge

topic knowledge

conversational history

•What are we talking about?

•Course Correction

•Build on what we know

2) Intent Determination &Hypothesis Building

3) Adaptive Responses

Understanding

+

Certainty

= Great User Experience!

Examples

“What's mumble the Admiral Twin Theater?”

Reply: "The movie schedule for the Admiral Twin Theater? Here you go ..."

Reply: "Did you want a movie schedule for Admiral Twin Theater?"

“What's mumble the Admiral Twin Theater?”

“What movies are at the Admiral Twin Theater?”

Reply: “Here’s what’s playing at the Admiral Twin"