Xuedong Huang
"Progress and Impact of Understanding Spoken Language"
Friday, September 25
FOWLER HALL: 1 - 2 PM
With all the recent progress in machine learning, big data, and computing infrastructure, we are likely only a few years away from the critical point where computers have reached human parity in understanding spoken language. We can already see the large leaps in spoken language processing exemplified by Microsoft’s Cortana, Skype Translator, and Project Oxford cloud services. I will use these examples to illustrate not only our society’s historical collective efforts but also the remaining challenges to reaching human parity in an effort to better prepare us for the immense societal impact.
Bio: Dr. Xuedong Huang is a Distinguished Engineer/Chief Scientist of Speech R&D at Microsoft Corporation. Dr. Huang leads the Advanced Technology Group within Microsoft’s Technology and Research Division. In 1993, Huang joined Microsoft to found the company's speech recognition team. As the head of Microsoft's spoken language efforts for over a decade, he provided technical, engineering, and business leadership to bring speech recognition to the mass market. Huang introduced SAPI to Windows in 1995 and later the enterprise-grade Speech Server 2004. Prior to his current role, he spent five years in Bing as chief architect working to improve search relevance for the web.