AboutChuck Cosby Expertise I can answer questions about speech recognition and natural language understanding. I am particulary strong in knowedge based natural langauge techniques. I cannot answer questions about robotics, nueral nets, prolog, or vision recognition - just speech and natural language.
Experience I have spent 25 years developing natural language software products. I have never developed speech systems, but I have developed sophisticated interfaces from natural language to speech. I have been working with speech recognition systems also for 25 years.
Question QUESTION: Dear Mr. Cosby,
How long do you think it will take for a computer to speak (in a chat, for example) as a human, and how advanced are we today?
ANSWER: We are not very advanced today. Maybe 10 years. Here is my standard response to these questions:
AI is based on the ability to communicate with a computer. The obvious best way is through speech. It would also be good for computers to be to 'see' as well. The problem with true conversational speech interaction - human to computer - is enormous. This problem has not been solved and won't be for at least 5 - 10 years. What about all the telephone based speech systems that United Airlines and Amtrak and others use? These are extremely primitive systems that can't really converse with the user even in the most basic sense. They ask simple questions and expect simple answers. What is the definition of AI as it relates to conversational speech based interaction? Of course you can see in the movies and on TV what the expectation is. The most extreme was the movie AI where the small boy in the film was an 'android' and could be 'loved' by humans. This kind of thing is centuries in the future if ever. What we would like to see as a first approximation of AI is a functional conversional system for purchasing products (like airline tickets) in a completely natural conversational fashion as if you were talking to a human. This may occur in the next 10 years or so.
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QUESTION: If in 10 years we could have machines as intelligent as you say, could it be possible in 20 or 30 years (with the expectation we have today) to have machines more intelligent than a human being, i.e. more creative, better learning skills, intellectually faster, etc.?
Answer I think not. We are so far from anything like that. certain kinds of research programs are inherently slow - take Fusion for energy, still 50 years out. Or New York to Tokyo in 2 hours - commercial jets are going backwards since the Concord's demise. Fuel efficiency in cars - very little progress in a hundred years. AI is like that - very slow to get anywhere. you're looking at hundreds of years if not centuries.
