Transcripts

Tech Talk: Giving to Google

SUSIE GHARIB: In tonight`s tech talk segment, to give or not to give to Google and to talk or not to talk, in English. Our technology maven, Scott Gurvey, takes it from here.

SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Google, the tech giant with a market valuation of $100 billion, seems to be the company everyone is talking about. "Time" magazine this week asks if consumers can trust Goggle with their secrets. It`s referring to the record of Internet searches you perform, but I was wondering the same thing when I saw Google`s new search all your computers feature.

For it to work, you have to let it load an index of all your files to its central servers. I`m not sure I want Google to have a list of everything on my hard drive. And while you`re thinking of security, take note that the head of the FBI addressed a big computer industry security conference this week for the first time. Robert Mueller says computer hacking is now a big moneymaker for organized crime and he asked for the industry`s help to fight back. You may have been in a fighting mood yourself if you`ve wrestled lately with a voice-activated system when making a plane reservation or dealing with your bank. But help is on the way. We saw some pretty neat technology recently at an IBM briefing called speech day. IBM now makes speech products other companies build into their applications. We`re already seeing some of these in places where you can`t, or shouldn`t, use your hands, like automobiles, where a program called free-form command manipulates the controls.

And the Voicebox system tunes and gets information from XM Satellite radio. This multilingual translator can help an English speaking tourist talk with a doctor who speaks only Mandarin. This demo ran on a typical laptop. Getting it to fit on a smaller, pocket-sized device is the next step.

DAVID HAHAMOO, MANAGER, HUMAN LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGIES, IBM: As we go forward, more and more complicated and complex things will come, which is ability to talk with somebody else in a different language, ability to have your visual information of multimedia to be available to you on demand. All of those things are things that are going to be following the conversational access or multi-modal access that is the focus of what we`re doing today.

GURVEY: Ever since the original "Star Trek" TV show, I`ve dreamed of the day I could command my computer by talking to it. That day still seems far off, but maybe getting a little closer. Scott Gurvey, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York.