Teaching my computer chemistry

This is a test of dictating a block in a very noisy coffee room. I have just bought a cost effective headset with a noise canceling microphone and so far every word that I have dictated has been faithfully rendered by the system.

This is impressive. It means that in our Amy project that we can probably rely on reasonable fidelity for converting the language that chemists speak into partially semantic natural language. So far I had had to make to corrections: common homophones such as to and two or four and for caused problems. However the system can learn from corrections and I expect and that it will make relatively few errors if I speak clearly. I am now very confident that it will be possible to give our fume hood simple instructions or queries that it will understand.

It is possible to introduce chemical names into the text; the system does a good job of recognizing them. Here is a list. Benzene, toluene, acetone, ethyl acetate, caffeine, testosterone, penicillin, malonic acid. It will also do functional groups. ethyl, methyl, propyl ,butyl, pentyl.

I had to correct some of those, but now they should be in the dictionary. Let’s try. Methyl, methyl, propyl, butyl, pentyl. I had to correct those. Let’s try again. Methyl, methyl, propyl, butyl, pentyl. I still had to make some corrections and I am worried that it confuses ethyl with methyl.

However with practice I expect it to learn. Dimethyl and he leaned her (should be dimethylaninline). Methyl benzyl eight (should be methyl benzoate). NA benzoate to (sodium benzoate) can it recognise sodium! Dichloromethane seen (should be dichlorobenzene). Chloro benzene. It’s got that one right. Dichloromethane. It’s got that one right. Chloro bromide on the same (Chlorobromomethane).

But it will be fun teaching it.