Well, some of them do, but if you've ever actually tried to use voice recognition software, you know why it still takes a human operator -- it works great if you're speaking loudly and slowly in a robotic voice, enunciating every word, with no background noise. But, if the speaker has an accent, talks fast, or slurs words due to a disability, etc., the software churns out word salad. One of our sources, JT, says his company's software only guesses the right words about 40 percent of the time, which is approximately the same amount as if he just pulled a handful of magnetic poetry words out of a bag and farted them onto a fridge. And this is what makes his job ridiculous.
See, JT's task is to help the software by listening to the call and then repeating what is said into the machine, using a slow monotone that will make it easier for it to translate. And one thing you find out by doing that job is old dudes really jam on phone sex. This would be totally fine, if they weren't using a captioning service that requires him, a person sitting in an office surrounded by other people who aren't hard of hearing, to repeat everything that is being said in a loud, clear robot voice. Are you picturing this?
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"One guy called a sex hotline," says JT, "which I got to start mentally preparing myself for, during the interlude of sexy waiting music (cheesy porn music embellished with a tasteful sprinkling of women orgasming). When the call was connected, I transformed into a woman wearing a bikini because I just got out of the pool and I was all sorts of wet. And all my coworkers around me knew it. Then, the heavy breathing and dirty talk started, and I had to caption the entire thing sounding like I was a Dalek in some really fucked up Doctor Who porn parody."
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"EJACULATE!"
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