RE: Additional parameters to SpeechRecognition (was "Speech API: first editor's draft posted")

I'm not sure what it means in practice to not define a confidenceThreshold
(option 4). Doesn't it just mean that recognizer behavior is
implementation-specific, and isn't that equivalent to option (2)? Isn't (4)
subject to the same problems when changing recognizers as (2)?

 

From: Jerry Carter [mailto:jerry@jerrycarter.org] 
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 3:03 PM
To: Glen Shires
Cc: public-speech-api@w3.org
Subject: Re: Additional parameters to SpeechRecognition (was "Speech API:
first editor's draft posted")

 

I'm inclined to agree with you on #4.  

 

Assuming that the audience is primarily individuals with limited experience
building speech applications, simplicity is admirable.  My experience has
been that for the vast majority of cases, the recognition scores are bimodal
(i.e. very high or very low).  Intermediate values are of limited utility
outside of application development teams within recognition vendors and
experienced speech applications teams.  This does not mean that recognition
thresholds are useless, because they aren't.  A talented and experienced
speech scientist can optimize settings to tailor the 'false acceptance' /
'false rejection' rates according to satisfy business objectives, but in
most cases, the cost of doing so is not justified.  Providing an outlet such
as a custom parameter seems appropriate for a first version.

 

-=- Jerry

 

 

On Apr 27, 2012, at 2:53 PM, Glen Shires wrote:





If I may summarize, we have 4 proposals for confidenceThreshold attribute,
each with drawbacks:

 

1. Arbitrarily define a value to be the default (be it 0.0 or 0.5 or
whatever), and let speech recognizers map this to their own confidence
values. Problem: mapping may "require significant skewing of the range" and
"squeeze" and "inflate"..."This would confuse developers who believe that a
.1 adjustment means the same thing across dialog states as long as the use
the same engine." [1]

 

2. Let speech recognizers define the default. Problem: "If the developer
switches to a new recognizer, the default confidenceThreshold may change. If
the developer then reads the confidenceThreshold (for example, to increment
it by 0.05), then presumably the browser needs to get the default confidence
value from the speech recognizer. For a remote recognizer, this round-trip
takes time, and the browser cannot stall the javascript processing." [2]

 

3. Make it write-only (not readable). Problem: "Incrementally bumping up
confidence (eg recognizer.confidence += 5) in response to a series of
misrecognitions is a common technique." [3]

 

4. Don't define a confidenceThreshold attribute in the first version of the
specification. Rely on setCustomParameter instead.

 

Given the complexities of defining this properly, the differences between
recognizer implementations, and because it takes a very savvy web-developer
to know how to adjust this properly (for many developers, relying on the
default is often best), I suggest #4 for the first version of this
specification.

 

/Glen Shires

 

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-speech-api/2012Apr/0049.html
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-speech-api/2012Apr/0049..html> 

[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-speech-api/2012Apr/0042.html
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-speech-api/2012Apr/0042..html> 

[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-speech-api/2012Apr/0041.html
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-speech-api/2012Apr/0041..html> 

 

 

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 9:50 AM, Young, Milan <Milan.Young@nuance.com>
wrote:



I'm glad to see we are coming together on this issue.  But I don't yet
understand how your [-1.0-1.0] mapping solves the problem of variations
across recognition engines any more than the usual [0-1.0] does.

 

In both cases, the developer is guaranteed that higher numbers will produces
<= results, and lower numbers will produce >= results.  But there is still
no guarantee that running the same number (whether it be the default or
otherwise) will provide the same number or quality of results across UAs,
speech engines, time, etc.

 

The only thing that you have done is suggest a default value of 0 which
could just as easily be represented with 0.5.  And on this point I'll take
the stance that it would be better for the speech engine to decide what that
value should be.  Sure the speech engine could always remap that number back
to 0.5, but in many cases this will require significant skewing of the
range.  For example, let's say that the engine selected .9 on [0-1.0] as a
good value for the task.  It now needs to map that to 0.5 which means that
the real scores of 0-8.99 are squeezed, and the .91-1.0 are inflated.  This
would confuse developers who believe that a .1 adjustment means the same
thing across dialog states as long as the use the same engine.

 

Put another way, if this community group could really solve the problem of
unifying confidence scores, then I'm all for it.  But we haven't done that,
and as such I view this suggestion as rocking the boat without any gain.

 

Thanks

 

 

From: Glen Shires [mailto:gshires@google.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 1:20 PM


To: Young, Milan
Cc: Hans Wennborg; Satish S; public-speech-api@w3.org
Subject: Re: Additional parameters to SpeechRecognition (was "Speech API:
first editor's draft posted")

 

 

I heartily agree that it is typically best to filter low confidence matches
in the speech recognizer (reducing computation and bandwidth). Using JS to
process the confidence values returned in the results does not imply that
pruning is not done in the recognizer. The recognizer still uses a
confidenceThreshold. If a savvy JS developer chooses to set the
confidenceThreshold, he should do so such that the recognizer prunes (but
doesn't over prune) the data returned, so JS can sufficiently process the
returned confidence values.

 

Implementation of a readable confidenceThreshold with ABSOLUTE values
corresponding to the recognizer's default value is problematic when
supporting multiple speech recognizers. Therefore I propose the following
definition for a readable/writeable confidenceThreshold attribute that uses
RELATIVE values...

 

 

 

confidenceThreshold attribute

 

This attribute represents a relative degree of confidence the recognition
system needs in order to return a recognition match instead of a nomatch.
The confidence-threshold is a monotonically increasing value between -1.0
(least confidence needed) and 1.0 (most confidence needed) with 0.0 as the
default.

 

 

 

In this way, 0.0 is the default for all recognizers, and each recognizer is
free to define how to map the threshold into whatever confidence values it
returns with the results. In other words:

 

- For a confidenceThreshold of 0.0, one recognizer may return results with
confidence values no lower than, for example, 0.72 whereas another might
return confidence values no lower than, for example, 0.31.

 

- For a confidenceThreshold of, for example, -0.2, each recognizer will
return more (or at least no fewer) results.

 

- For a confidenceThreshold of, for example, 0.2, each recognizer will
return fewer (or at least no more) results.

 

I believe this is a good step towards consistent behavior across UAs and
speech engines.

 

(Note that I intentionally defined confidenceThreshold as a value between
-1.0 and 1.0 instead of between 0.0 and 1.0 for clarity. This is to
emphasize that these threshold values are RELATIVE and do not have any
ABSOLUTE correspondence to the confidence values returned.)

 

/Glen Shires

 

 

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Young, Milan <Milan.Young@nuance.com>
wrote:

You have ignored my two points about why it is often best to filter low
confidence matches on the server (ie performance and clipping).  Just
because Deborah points out that there are additional use cases for filtering
on the client does not invalidate my claim.

 

Yes, we should try to deliver consistent behavior across UAs, speech
engines, and even dialog states.  But let's not throw the baby out with the
bathwater if we can't nail it down in a v1.

 

 

From: Glen Shires [mailto:gshires@google.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 10:43 AM
To: Young, Milan
Cc: Hans Wennborg; Satish S; public-speech-api@w3.org


Subject: Re: Additional parameters to SpeechRecognition (was "Speech API:
first editor's draft posted")

 

I think (hope) that most web developers won't have to worry about confidence
values because the default set by the speech recognizer should be
sufficient.

 

However, a JS API developer savvy enough to understand how/when to properly
set a confidenceThreshold, is also savvy enough to intelligently process the
confidence values returned in the results. As Deborah mentioned [1], "For
example, if the top two alternatives in the nbest have very similar
confidences...".  Typically, processing the confidence result values is a
much better strategy than trying to tune the confidenceThreshold.

 

Only extremely savvy JS API developers will understand how to properly tune
the confidenceThreshold so that it prunes (but doesn't over prune) the data
returned.  I believe these developers can best adjust the
confidenceThreshold by processing the confidence result values returned by
prior recognitions (as opposed to simply bumping the default value by 0.05).


 

 

Also, from an implementation standpoint, there's a major issue with making
confidenceThreshold readable. If the developer switches to a new recognizer,
the default confidenceThreshold may change. If the developer then reads the
confidenceThreshold (for example, to increment it by 0.05), then presumably
the browser needs to get the default confidence value from the speech
recognizer. For a remote recognizer, this round-trip takes time, and the
browser cannot stall the javascript processing.

 

/Glen Shires

 

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-speech-api/2012Apr/0031.html
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-speech-api/2012Apr/0031..html> 

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 9:47 AM, Young, Milan <Milan.Young@nuance.com>
wrote:

The speech community has lived for 20 years with the fact that confidence
values are not portable across engines.  I understand that we are courting a
new class of developers with this HTML-based initiative, but I want to be
careful not to dumb it down to the point where we impact the mainstream
speech industry.

 

Incrementally bumping up confidence (eg recognizer.confidence += 5) in
response to a series of misrecognitions is a common technique.  I also find
it generally ugly that confidence is special cased with a function instead
of a property.  (Is it a JS limitation that you cannot mark a property as
write only?)

 

I would rather say something like "Recognition engines generally do a good
job of choosing the right confidence value for a recognition task.  If you
do choose to read this property, know that it's value is not portable to
other recognition tasks, other speech engines, or other user agents."

 

Thanks

 

From: Glen Shires [mailto:gshires@google.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 8:11 AM
To: Hans Wennborg
Cc: Young, Milan; Satish S; public-speech-api@w3.org


Subject: Re: Additional parameters to SpeechRecognition (was "Speech API:
first editor's draft posted")

 

confidenceThreshold

 

I think we all agree that speech recognizers have a concept of confidence,
and that it can be mapped to a monotonically increasing range of 0.0 to 1.0.
However, specific values (for example 0.5) do not correspond to the same
level of confidence for different recognizers.

 

I believe that if the developer does not set the confidenceThreshold, the
speech recognizer should use a default value that is appropriate for that
recognizer.

 

A complication with a confidenceThreshold attribute is defining the default
value (if the value is read, but not written, what value does the BROWSER
return? - particularly because the optimal default value may vary from one
RECOGNIZER to another).

 

Perhaps instead of an attribute, this should be a write-only value,
specifically a setConfidenceThreshold method.

 

/Glen Shires

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 6:43 AM, Hans Wennborg <hwennborg@google.com> wrote:

On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 17:22, Young, Milan <Milan.Young@nuance.com> wrote:
> There are two reasons for including confidence that I would like this
community to consider:
>  Efficiency - Similar to the argument Satish put forward for limiting the
size of the nbest array, pruning the result candidates at the server is more
efficient.
>  Clipping - There are many environments where background noise and side
speech that can trigger junk results.  If confidence is low, this will
trigger a result and then the application enters a deaf period where it
processes the result and discovers the content is junk.  If real speech
happens during this phase, its start will be missed.
>
> Every recognizer that was ever invented has a concept of confidence.  Yes,
the semantics of that value vary across platforms, but for us to push this
to a custom parameter will confuse developers, and ultimately slow adoption.

Ok, I don't feel strongly about this, so I would be fine adding a
confidenceThreshold if others agree.


> Regarding the timeout family, an open-ended dialog like "Tell me what is
wrong with your computer", should have generous timeouts.  Compare this to
"So it's something to do with your new Google double mouse configuration, is
that correct?" which should have short timeouts.
>
> Our goal should be a consistent application experience across UAs, and
that's only going to happen if we standardize timeouts.  I would also like
to mention that the definition of these timeouts is clear and has been
industry standard for 10+ years.

What do you think about my idea of just letting the web page handle
the timeout itself, calling abort() when it decides a request is
taking too long?


Thanks,
Hans





 

-- 
Thanks!

Glen Shires

 





 

-- 
Thanks!

Glen Shires

 





 

-- 
Thanks!

Glen Shires

 





 

-- 
Thanks!

Glen Shires