Modern speech-recognition technology in action: a data-driven revolution

Data Driven Research Lunch Seminar series continues on 27 January. Dr. Antti Ukkonen will give a talk with title Modern speech-recognition technology in action: a data-driven revolution.

Abstract: Automatic speech-recognition (ASR) has historically had a reputation of “almost working, but not really.” However, during the past 10 years, ASR technology has taken immense leaps ahead. Home-automation systems and personal assistants such as Siri have reached a level of performance that is most of the time practically usable, rather than merely annoying. These developments have been driven less by advances in algorithms or theory, but more by availability of data and efficient infrastructure for computation. In this talk I give a brief general introduction to the topic of ASR, and outline some relevant research activities. I also discuss the ups and downs of life in a technology start-up that operates in an area where the next revolution is always right around the corner.

Bio of the speaker: Antti is currently the Chief Product Officer at Speechly, a Helsinki-based start-up company focusing on speech-recognition technology. He spends his days on a wide spectrum of activities ranging from prioritising engineering activities and dealing with customers to writing C++ code for efficient machine learning inference on mobile devices. Prior to joining Speechly in 2020, Antti spent 15 years in academia doing research on data mining algorithms. After obtaining his doctoral degree at Aalto university in 2008, Antti has worked at Yahoo! Research, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT, Finnish Institute for Occupational Health, and finally as an Academy Research Fellow at University of Helsinki.

Please see further information on the seminar serie here. 

Chair: Pauli Miettinen, pauli.miettinen@uef.fi

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