Speech recognition technology: A critique

This paper introduces the session on advanced speech recognition technology. The two papers comprising this session argue that current technology yields a performance that is only an order of magnitude in error rate away from human performance and that incremental improvements will bring us to that desired level. I argue that, to the contrary, present performance is far removed from human performance and a revolution in our thinking is required to achieve the goal. It is further asserted that to bring about the revolution more effort should be expended on basic research and less on trying to prematurely commercialize a deficient technology.