$ASR tokens are essentially the lifeblood of modern speech recognition technology. When you talk to your phone or a smart speaker, the system doesn't hear words the way we do. Instead, it breaks your audio down into tiny pieces called tokens. These can be individual sounds, syllables, or even whole words depending on the model.
Think of them as the building blocks that help AI bridge the gap between human speech and digital data. By processing these tokens, machines can predict what we are saying with incredible accuracy. It is a fascinating blend of linguistics and math that makes our hands-free digital world possible.