Danger Will Robinson!

I’ve recently been quite freaked out by the quality of voice recognition technology. OK so my Nintendo DS can recognise when I say four colours (blue, black, red and yellow) and the numbers zero to ten. I can accept this as they are phonetically diverse.

But yesterday I booked a hotel room for Transpocalypse via an automated system. It could recognise my name once said and spelt, it knew my address from the first line and postcode, but what freaked me out most was it recognising the city. They’ve hundreds of locations and it knew where I meant. It even read it back in that scary sub-American “you have been selected for a special offer” voice.

Scary, but better than the old days off,

“Cancel”
“You have selected delete.”
“No. I said cancel.”
“Deleting all work. Are you sure?”
“NO!”
“You have confirmed deletion”
“Nooooooooooooooooooooo!”