What do supper time phone solicitation and voice activated software have in common

Robbie the Robot in Forbidden Planet, recognize the late Canadian actor Leslie Nielsen in this fun 1956 movie? (picture MGM)

I’ve been a lifetime fan of voice activated computers and robots.

As the owner and occasional user of Dragon Naturally Speaking, Nuance believes I’m fair game for email spam and supper time sales calls to upgrade.

Naturally Speaking is the reigning king of voice activation software, or so I’m told. Nuance, the developer, is driving me nuts with spam sales email and now the pushy, phone sales person right at suppertime – arghh!

It won’t work. I’m not upgrading since the program fails to deliver the promise of voice activated artificial intelligence.

You and I are the best illustrations of voice activation and I’ll acknowledge a fair amount of artificial intelligence.

Getting your computer to respond to word commands is right out of science fiction. Try Robbie the Robot in B film The Forbidden Planet, a 1956 sci-fi film. Robbie could respond to voice commands from Dr. Morbius played by Walter Pidgeon. The idea was so cool that I pestered my mother to get me a Robbie Robot toy. Guess what? Robbie didn’t respond to voice commands. 

Tomy Omnibot 2000, 26" voice activated robot circa 1987

Then came Space Odyssey 2001 and HAL with his warm mellifluous voice. “Dave can I help you?” A voice activated computer with artificial intelligence and the same emotions as a human – that’s a dangerous combination.

There were no HAL toys but the idea of voice activation persisted. I got my kids a Omnibot 2000 for Christmas. It was voice activated and could serve a double malt scotch. Great gift for the kids eh?

The first Christmas I can remember tricking my five year old son James into thinking Omni could talk. I hid around the corner and talked into the remote control, which was played on the tiny speaker. James played along and talked back.

Omni broke his wrist serving drinks and other party tricks and is now in the basement. Someday we are going to resurrect him for the next round of 4 year olds who visit.

Motorola had a voice activated cell phone in 1988 that we trained to dial home. “Turn on telephone. Call home.”  It responded with a weird “Call home”. James trained his voice to mimic mine and could call his mother with it. He also eerily perfected my scrawled signature.

In the 199o’s we became Apple resellers, mostly to get our hands on their Newton hand-held and voice-activated Agent desktop computers.

Neither of them worked very well. The Newton’s handwriting recognition was spotty at best.  The Voice Agent used something called Apple Script in OS7. It was supposed to allow control of the computer. Mainly it got confused and executed a string of nonsensical commands that resulted in lock-up.

In 2001 we gave IBM ViaVoice a whirl. It didn’t recognize enough words to be efficient in dictation and I dropped it.

Ever the optimist I installed Dragon Speaking 8, 9 and 10. None of them was suitable for office dictation or writing. Either they are too slow or don’t recognize enough words.

Nuance says that Naturally Speaking 11 is the bee-knees of voice recognition.

Someday I will try it. In the meantime would they please stop spamming me with emails and supper time phone calls.

In the meantime I’ll save my money and not buy another development product in voice activation.