“It is a quibble whether it reads the question or hears it from Trebek.”
Understanding spoken speech requires far more processing. There can be difficulties in a machine understanding regional dialects, slang, and subtle differences in similar sounding words. For example, disambiguating heir, air, and err requires additional processing to determine which word best fits the context of the sentence.
“Understanding spoken speech requires far more processing...”
Be that as it may, I believe you’ll notice the human contestants also read the clues. In fact, while playing along at home I like to tune Alex out, for the sake of avoiding his pompous pronunciations, bad impressions and accents, and stupid jokes.