Spinvox accused of vast call centre operations

Comments

• Spinvox is a fraud Posted by Simon, uk
• This is just classic, Spinvox is now listed in Wikipedia under Hoaxes in the Mechanical Turk entry:
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk
  
  In July 2009 it was shown that the Spinvox voice-to-text service was to a considerable degree a modern equivalent of the Mechanical Turk, supposedly using a computer to provide the conversion, but actually relying on call-centre staff to do this manually. [83]
  
  # ^ Rory Cellan-Jones on BBC News, "[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/07/the_spinning_of_spinvox.html 'The Spinning of Spinvox'],", 23 July 2008.
  
  Posted by Brent, US
• I remember as a child being being very excited as my parents bought a 'television' for me, only to find it was a toy with a paper roll of pictures which crawled over a screen using clockwork - I was crushed. I imagine that is how investors in Spinvox feel now. But there is one big difference: the 'television' came from a toy shop. A lot of time and energy went into persuading Spinvox investors that they were buying leading-edge AI technology - this is fraud. In fact at £120 million there are only a few that beat it: Barrings, Enron and Madoff. Why are the police not all over this? Posted by flyingharbinger, UK
• This is so funny, when you really think about it, it's fairly obvious that it must rely on massive human involvement - speach recognition even after 30 years is still very very flakey, having to deal with a vast array of accents and collequial expressions etc. I have worked at the high end of IT (coincidentally at one of the big hedgie investors, in SpinVox..Woops) with some programming genuises (not the investment managers!) , and I must say this looks like a wizard of Oz machine. Funny when they pull back the curtain, then again maybe not so funny if you have invested $$$ in it. Posted by Andy, UK
• What amazes me Andy is that i don't really mind how they get me the message, as long as they get it to me correctly and they don't share my important data. If that means thousands of call operators somewhere in Glasgow or India typing away then so be it. Just tell me that's what you are doing rather than try and make out that you have amazing technology that will solve the world's ills Posted by stuartmiles, United Kingdom