Comments on: SpinVox latest response: 98% less messages are referred to humans

By: Ewan

Ewan — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:06:09 +0000

Are you saying that a human might be verifying almost everything being produced by the system?

By: watchthecontext

watchthecontext — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:58:07 +0000

Read everything from SpinVox carefully – without the context they are working from you cannot make any assumption about what the figures actually mean. For instance being able to predict 99% of the time what is going to be said does not mean that it has not been listened to – the system may predict, but it needs to be verified. Also it might predict 99% of the content but also predicts another million combination of words and phrases – only a person could work out from all the possible predictions what is the correct one.

By: Ewan

Ewan — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:06:09 +0000

Are you saying that a human might be verifying almost everything being produced by the system?

By: watchthecontext

watchthecontext — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:58:07 +0000

Read everything from SpinVox carefully – without the context they are working from you cannot make any assumption about what the figures actually mean. For instance being able to predict 99% of the time what is going to be said does not mean it has been listened to, the system may predict, but it needs to be verified. Also it might predict 99% of the content but also predicts another million combination's of words and phrases – only a person could work out from all the possible predictions what is the correct one.

By: yiannopoulos (Milo Yiannopoulo

yiannopoulos (Milo Yiannopoulo — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:35:59 +0000

Twitter Comment

@Ew4n As you say in your post, their response has been spectacularly poorly judged. Whoever is responsible for their PR should be shot.

- Posted using Chat Catcher

By: willhead (Will Head)

willhead (Will Head) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:41:08 +0000

Twitter Comment

@yiannopoulos I'm calling meh. Voice recognition ain't perfect, I'd rather get the message than a load of garbage.

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By: Ew4n (Ewan)

Ew4n (Ewan) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:40:00 +0000

Twitter Comment

@yiannopoulos I think a lot of people share that (BS) perspective

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By: Ew4n (Ewan)

Ew4n (Ewan) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:39:01 +0000

Twitter Comment

@MWEB1 aye what an arse for them.

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By: Flashy1980 (Flashy - David Man

Flashy1980 (Flashy - David Man — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:33:02 +0000

Twitter Comment

RT @Ew4n: SpinVox claims only 2% of messages are referred to humans: [link to post]

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By: neville (Neville Hobson)

neville (Neville Hobson) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:18:00 +0000

FriendFeed Comment

Sp... [link to post]

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By: conoro (Conor O'Neill)

conoro (Conor O'Neill) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:17:01 +0000

Twitter Comment

Comment by @ewanspence on the MIR blog beautifully explains how stats can be used to confuse [link to post] . Also Bad Science Ch 13

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By: Conor O'Neill

Conor O'Neill — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:14:36 +0000

Comment by @ewanspence on the MIR blog beautifully explains how stats can be used to confuse http://bit.ly/ZoU8d . Also Bad Science Ch 13

[Original tweet, Topsy page]

By: ewanspence (Ewan Spence)

ewanspence (Ewan Spence) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:13:00 +0000

Twitter Comment

Let's spin #spinvoxeand their 2% to something more meaningful. Perhaps up to 66% of messages need human intervention? [link to post]

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By: Ewan Spence

Ewan Spence — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:10:46 +0000

Let's spin #spinvoxeand their 2% to something more meaningful. Perhaps up to 66% of messages need human intervention? http://bit.ly/djjC3

[Original tweet, Topsy page]

By: EwanSpence

EwanSpence — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:09:15 +0000

Hold on a mo, still think you;re being spun here

" the system requires only two per cent of the input it required just two years ago "

Let's be evil. Let's try and work out how many MESSAGES this is. ie how BIG can the number be. First up, lets say at the start ALL messages had to go to humans. 100%. So that means now tha tthe input required is two percent of the workload. Okay, imagining a sample of 1000 SMS messages,each filling 160 characters. That's 160,000 letters, so taking an average of 5 letters per word (good rule of thumb in code breaking) that's 32,000 words

So in year X, 32,000 of 32,000 words are checked by humans.

Now, in year X+2, 32000/50 only 640 words need checked. But how many messages does that represent? Well if the 160 SMS long messages contain, on average 32 words, then our batch of 1000 messages with an equal spread has one wrong word in two thirds of the messages, and that means we could be lookign at an upper limit of 66% of messages requiring human intervention.

That's a far cry from the PR spin attempt at 2%

...and I'm not even a statistician!

By: Flashy - David Mannl

Flashy - David Mannl — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:09:09 +0000

RT @Ew4n: SpinVox claims only 2% of messages are referred to humans: http://bit.ly/Ut5CI

[Original tweet, Topsy page]

By: kgutteridge

kgutteridge — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:02:07 +0000

SPINvox,

I honestly don't think people would mind if they were more honest and less Spin

By: Neville Hobson

Neville Hobson — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:01:10 +0000

@ewanspence huh? What are you talking about? Shouldn't that comment be directed to @Ew4n, the author of the post? http://bit.ly/1x4Rdl

[Original tweet, Topsy page]

By: DomOlszowski (Dominic Olszowsk

DomOlszowski (Dominic Olszowsk — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Twitter Comment

SpinVox claims only 2% of messages are referred to humans: [link to post] (via @Ew4n)

- Posted using Chat Catcher

By: PatrickatJPR

PatrickatJPR — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:56:10 +0000

Just to make it clear, I'm not blaming Porter Novelli the agency. I can't imagine that any agency would suggest this kind of strategy. It seems to me to be a cultural fear or misunderstanding of PR at SpinVox.

By: Ewan

Ewan — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:55:05 +0000

You, like 'Name' (posting above) are absolutely correct.

By: patrickjpr (patrickjpr)

patrickjpr (patrickjpr) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:55:01 +0000

Twitter Comment

SpinVox still hiding behind 'clever' [read poor] PR - [link to post]

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By: Ewan

Ewan — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:54:31 +0000

You know what you're absolutely right, Name. I'll update the post.

By: Dominic Olszowski

Dominic Olszowski — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:54:22 +0000

SpinVox claims only 2% of messages are referred to humans: http://bit.ly/Ut5CI (via @Ew4n)

[Original tweet, Topsy page]

By: patrickjpr

patrickjpr — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:52:36 +0000

SpinVox still hiding behind 'clever' [read poor] PR - http://is.gd/1NGk6

[Original tweet, Topsy page]