Lost in Translation: When 14% WER Hides a 44% Failure Rate
Opening — Why this matters now Speech recognition systems proudly advertise single-digit Word Error Rates (WER). Investors nod. Product teams ship. Procurement signs off. And then a user says: “I’m on Arguello.” In controlled benchmarks, modern ASR systems look nearly flawless. In real deployments—ride-hailing, emergency dispatch, mobility services—they frequently mis-transcribe the one token that anchors the entire request: the street name. ...