Abstract
When voice-activated assistants first appeared on the market, they were perceived as a high-tech frill. Science fiction enthusiasts, reminded of the HAL 9000 computer in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, amused their friends by stumping Amazon’s Alexa with commands to open the pod bay doors. Meanwhile, Apple had to prime its Siri iPhone voice assistant with searing comebacks to the question: What are you wearing? But pretty soon, consumers got serious about voice-activated devices, routinely asking the ever-ready, ever-listening vocal presence in their living space for a check on the weather or to cue up the latest from Taylor Swift. Voice activation is now becoming an even more serious technology, completing its journey from science fiction to fact-based science tool with the emergence of voice-activated laboratory assistants. The trick will be upgrading the natural language processing (NLP) programs underpinning home voice systems to recognize chemical names, technical jargon, full
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