The radio plays and we sing along, only maybe the lyrics you think you hear aren’t actually the lyrics at all. It happens to me a lot. These are called ‘mondegreens’ which are words that sound the same or pretty close to the real words. The results are often quite comical. However, when pitting the human ears against IBM’s Watson computer noted as the world’s smartest computer, to transcribe those same lyrics, the ears have it. The ‘contest’ was performed using a Capella versions of Taylor Swift’s I Knew You Were trouble, Van Halen’s Runnin’ with the Devil, Elton John’s Tiny Dancer, and Brad Paisley’s Ticks. The human transcriptionists had never heard any of the songs.
Check out how Watson did against the human transcriptionists and SPOILER: Humans win by a landslide!
Let’s hear it for the humans!
