Artificial Intelligence is not perfect quite yet

My desktop computer's screen saver or wallpaper or whatever it is informed me this morning that May 29th is World Otter Day. I don't know why otters would even have a day or why it would fall on May 29th and I'm in no hurry to find out.

Instead, I want to continue a variation of a pet peeve we have discussed in a few previous posts. We talked before about the sometimes laughable, sometimes infuriating inaccuracies that closed captioning produces on one's television screen. Today we will look at a couple of examples that happened on my smart phone when I asked for the lyrics to a song.

From some of the output I received I gather that someone or something (voice-recognition software?) listens to a recording of the requested song and produces a printed copy of what he, she, or it thinks he, she, or it heard.

Here are two sets of lyrics that happen to be gospel songs. One was written by Bill and Gloria Gaither several decades ago as a song for children. The other is a fairly recent song written by their adult daughter Suzanne. I have highlighted the boo-boos (by which I mean obvious errors if one knows the songs) in red:


1. I Am A Promise

[Chorus]
I am a promise, I am a possibility
I am a promise with a capital P
I am a great big bundle of potentiality
And I am learning to hear God's voice
And I am trying to make the right choices
I'm a promise to be anything He wants me to be

[Bridge]
I can go anywhere that He wants me to go
I can be anything that He wants me to be
I can climb the high mountsin
I can cross the White Sea
I am a great big promise you see

and then the Chorus is repeated. There is actually an area on Russia's northwestern coast that is called the White Sea, but it has nothing to do with this song. Instead of 'White Sea' the transcription should have read 'wide sea'.


2. Jesus Is Everywhere

[Verse 1]
In the coldest part of Scotland
The darkest night of the year
I found a church where the lights were dim
And I sat out in the rain
And we sang about a baby
Angel voices filled that place
I could feel the love of Jesus
And the tears ran down my face

[Chorus]
Jesus is in the water
Jesus is in the wine
Jesus is standing next to us
In the noisy Starbucks line
Jesus is in Manhattan
Jesus is in St. Claire
He's waiting around the corner
Jesus is everywhere
Jesus is everywhere
Jesus is everywhere
Jesus is everywhere

[Verse 2]
On a winding street in Venice
On the sunny side of town
Church bells rang out in Saint Loco
So we went in and sat down
We forgot that it was Sunday
The priest was hard to understand
But we heard the word for Jesus
Holding waivers in our hands

[Chorus]

[Bridge] In the darkest hour of nighttime
In the dark night of the soul
In the balmy heat of summer
In the bitter winter cold
In the halls of every mansion
In apartments where you sleep
if You've never gone too far
And you're never in too deep

and then, surprise, the chorus is repeated. Here are the corrections to the red lyrics:

'I sat out in the rain' should be 'I sat down in the rear'.

Anybody with half a brain or any familiarity with either Venice or Christianity would know (or could guess) that church bells rang out in San Marco, not Saint Loco (seriously, Saint Loco?) and Suzanne and her companion were holding wafers, not waivers, in their hands.

Apparently AI doesn't have half a brain just yet.

I am feeling so superior to AI at the moment, but it is probably a bit premature of me to do so. I've heard that AI is a fast learner.

A word to the wise: Hold the gloating until a date to be announced later.