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Tushar Aher Patil
Trying to do better • 2m
Unknown AI Fact The first AI voice assistant existed in 1961 — and it ran on paper tape. Most people think of AI voice assistants as a modern convenience — Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant — all born in the last decade or so. But the story goes way further back. In 1961, IBM introduced a device called “Shoebox” — one of the world’s earliest speech recognition systems. Here’s the crazy part: Shoebox could recognize **16 spoken words and digits**, but it did so **without a single transistor or microchip.** Instead, it used **analog circuits and paper tape**. Imagine: a machine “listening” and responding — decades before personal computers or smartphones were common. ### Why does this matter? * It shows how long AI research has been in the making, with ideas tested long before the tech was ready. * It highlights how **simple speech recognition was at the start**, compared to today’s complex assistants understanding natural language. * It reminds us that AI progress is a marathon, not a sprint. The journey from Shoebox to Siri * IBM’s Shoebox was a research demo — it couldn’t hold a conversation. * In the 1980s and 90s, voice recognition improved with computers but was still clunky. * Only in the 2010s, with advances in machine learning and cloud computing, did assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant become practical and ubiquitous. --- ### The lesson? Great ideas often start small — sometimes very small. The seeds of AI assistants were planted over 60 years ago, in machines using paper tape and analog circuits. Next time you say “Hey Siri,” remember: you’re talking to the descendant of a 1961 machine that could barely recognize a handful of words. 💬 Have you ever used voice assistants? What’s your favorite use case? Drop your thoughts below!
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