Here’s A Job That’s Still Done Better By Humans

Where I grew up, there were five radio stations: Country, Country, Classical, Talk, and Rock. My folks liked older country music (and the hosts on that station were probably the best in the area), so I listened to a lot of it. One of the songs I liked because it was so interesting was “The Auctioneer” by Leroy Van Dyke. I got a tape recording of it one day when it was on and tried to emulate his way of talking. Never quite got it, but I could understand what he was saying.

Turns out, the most modern software managed by the largest tech titans on the planet can’t even get that far. I stumbled across a video of Van Dyke performing his song on a YouTube channel called Country Road TV. If you haven’t heard the song before, here he is singing it (he first recorded it back in 1956!):

I went to skip backwards to listen to part of the song again but missed and accidentally turned on captioning. The results were… well, see for yourself:

Keep in mind that the song is about a guy who wants to learn how to talk like an old-school auctioneer; I believe he sells a goat in one part. Nothing about monocles or tables…

And the final run-off at the end of the song is even better:

It’s like the whole “There’s a Bathroom on the Right” thing, but with computers. I am pretty sure that BitDefender didn’t exist in 1956, but who knows – maybe Mr. Van Dyke updated the lyrics.

While most people today probably aren’t looking up captions for 60+ year old novelty country music, issues like this are a real problem for people who rely on captioning for important and accurate information… and it seems the technology still has a lot of room to improve.