SPEECH RECOGNITION STRUGGLES TO LIFE.

Truly satisfactory speech recognition remains years away, but declining semiconductor costs and improved software techniques promise an important new stage. Current products have troublesome operating procedures and limited vocabularies, but impending products offer large gains in price/performance with improved statistical pattern-matching methods. Despite present shortcomings some useful applications of today's speech recognition systems are reviewed. New applications within the next few years are expected in telecommunications, electronic banking and access to centralized databases.