NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] The Google Nexus Speech to Text "Censorship" Controversy
I hadn't planned to send anything through the list on this topic, but I've received a surprising number of submissions expressing concern about perceived censorship in Google's speech to text system as deployed for the Nexus One Android phone. Various observers (including Reuters) have noted (sometimes with what I'd consider to be an oddly elevated level of indignation) that Google displays common "swear words" with "####" instead of the actual words. At least one article submitted to me on this topic declared the behavior to be a "major limitation." "Major" huh? Egads. Google's explanation for this situation makes complete sense and is an object example of how to deal with Type I vs. Type II errors. Google notes that given the current functionality of their speech to text system, they were concerned about incorrectly returning a potentially offensive word when one had not actually been intended, so they provide it in redacted form. This actually is a good compromise that is a step up over how many traditional speech to text systems handle such words "out of the box" -- which usually is to simply return some innocent word that sounds something like the "offensive" word that was actually uttered, even though the algorithms actually know internally what the speaker probably had in mind. Google handles such situations even better, by saying in effect, "You probably meant a word from a classic George Carlin routine ( http://bit.ly/53b37i - [ YouTube - Adults Only! ], but if you didn't please don't be offended." Perhaps providing an option so that users so inclined could disable this behavior would be worth considering, but for most users the protection provided by default might well avoid some embarrassing situations. Overall, it's just not a big deal. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator