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1A) We're growing more used to chatting to our computers,phones and smart speakers through voice assistants like Amazon's
2Alexa,Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana. Blind and partially sighted people have been using text-to-speech converters
3for decades.
4B) Out of these assistants,Cris is the most well-known.The assistant uses voice inquiries and a natural-language user
5interface(界面)to answer questions.The software adapts to users'individual language usages,searches,and preferences,with
6continuing use.
7C) Some think voice could soon take over from typing and clicking as the main way to interact online.But what are the
8challenges of moving to “the spoken web”?
9D) What use is written online content if you can't read?That is the situation facing illiterate (不识字的)African
10farmers.They are often denied crucial information the web offers many others.With a literacy rate in some parts of
11Africa at only 22.6%, farmers are often “underpaid for their produce because they might be unaware of the prevailing
12prices,”says Francis Dittoh,a researcher behind Mr Meteo,a speech-based weather information service.
13E) “The most frequently heard complaint is about rainfall predictions,”says Mr Dittoh, who lives in Tamale,northern
14Ghana.“They tell us the methods their forefathers used to predict the weather don't seem to work as well these
15days."This is down to climate change,he believes.Yet knowing when it's going to rain is vital for farmers wanting to sow
16seeds,irrigate crops or take their animals out to the fields to feed on grass.
17F) Mr Dittoh says the idea of converting online weather reports into speech came from the farmers themselves,after a
18workshop in the village of Guabuligah."They came up with this,”he says.Mr Meteo takes the online weather
19forecast,converts it to a short recording in the appropriate language and makes it available on a basic phone.Farmers
20ring up to receive the information.The local language Dagbani is spoken by 1.2 million people but is not served by any
21online translation applications.The service was designed to be cheap and easy to run,says Mr Dittoh.He plans to begin
22field tests this month,working with Tamale's Savanna Agricultural Research Institute.
23G) The spoken web could also help the one-in-five adults in Europe and the U.S.with poor reading skills.But building the
24spoken web-web-to-voice and voice-to-web-isn't straightforward.For software to understand pizza is served at Italian
25restaurants is easy. To cover multiple domains and to be able to have a conversation with users on every single topic is
26still a long way off.
27H) So although many computer assistants can answer simple questions about the weather and play music for us,anything
28resembling a wide-ranging human conversation is decades away.Artificial intelligence just isn't smart enough yet.Even
29turning your voice into text—automatic speech recognition—is one of the hardest problems to solve, as there are as many
30ways to pronounce things as there are people on the planet.
31I) Siri has often been praised for its ability to interpret our casual language and deliver very specific and accurate
32results,sometimes even providing additional information.
33J) Using voice interaction feels far more intimate than surfing the net the old-fashioned way.This is intentional as the
34informal tone of the assistant helps create an emotional attachment.But if something speaks,it must also listen.Our
35phones are always near us and they are collecting data about us all the time.This has already raised privacy
36concerns.The American Civil Liberties Union has stated that digital assistants create a threat to privacy from
37hackers.Some people have other concerns.They worry assistants will one day be used to deliver advertising directly to
38us.
39K) But digital voices need more personality to make them popular.Robots are not yet witty, Siri is boring.The benefits
40of using voice instead of tapping fingers obviously.depend on the context.Doctors completing online forms about their
41patients by speech,for example,can dictate 150 words a minute,three times faster than typing on a keyboard. This enables
42them to spend less time on administration and more time with patients.
43L) Last year,speech recognition company Nuance helped a doctors'surgery in Dukinfield, near Manchester,set up a speech
44system for the practice's six doctors.Now they can dictate notes on a patient's health condition and treatment and a
45smart assistant automatically enters the information into the right fields on a web form.Previously,the doctors made
46voice recordings that were then transcribed by secretaries—a process that was costly and likely to cause delays.The new
47system means letters to patients now have more detail.
48M) Using voice also makes sense when you're doing other things with your hands.Think about when you're cooking,and you
49just want to know what the next step in the recipe is.Your hands are covered with oil;you're not going to get on the
50iPad,so it's a lot more natural to talk.And speech obviously makes sense when you're driving.In the U.S.,29%of drivers
51admit they surf behind the wheel,according to insurance firm State Farm.This is up from 13%in 2009.No wonder using
52mobile phones while driving causes more crashes a year than drink driving,says the U.S.National Safety Council.
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