Q&A: Scientist Ronald Kaplan, on the future of voice technology

For nearly 40 years, Ronald Kaplan has been working on better ways to talk with machines. A former researcher at Xerox PARC and Microsoft, he's now a consulting professor in computational linguistics at Stanford and a senior director at the Silicon Valley research division of Nuance Communications, a Massachusetts company that makes voice-enabled software for cars, smartphones, corporate call centers and medical transcription services. While its software has been used by Apple, Samsung, Ford and Subaru, among others, Nuance also competes with major tech firms, including Google and Microsoft, that are working on their own voice systems. We recently spoke with Kaplan at the Nuance offices in Sunnyvale; the following was edited for length and clarity. Q: Can you give me a high-level overview of where we are with voice technology?