Another startup that’s maturing in AI2’s incubator, Blue Canoe Learning, has developed an app that uses speech recognition and machine learning to help users pronounce their English better.
“Why is pronunciation important? A, there’s a bunch of people I know, and I can’t quite understand them,” Etzioni said. “That’s a smaller thing. But a much bigger thing is, think about the developing world, where, say, if you live in Bangladesh or the Philippines. Your road to the middle class is through a call center, but to get that great job … your English pronunciation has to improve. Well, they have built exactly the technology that supports that.”
