Inspired by that Interests Meme
Jan. 6th, 2008 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniThere's a new science magazine show on PBS called Wired Science (It was directly against Pushing Daisies, so I didn't start watching until the Writers' Guild strike). And last month, they had an interview with a guy who's coming up with ways to a) make computers work better, and b) get humans to work for free.
He's the one who invented CAPTCHA (those funny looking letter and number combinations that you have to type when you log into places and sign up for things, because humans can read weird-looking letters, and bots can't). Right now, he's started to use that system to help with putting entire libraries online... the books are being optically scanned in, and the computers can read most of the words, but not all of them. So they're taking the words the computers can't read, and putting them into those CAPTCHA boxes, and when the humans type the right words, they insert those words into their home texts...
Well, he's also come up with a couple of games (this is where he gets thousands of manhours of labor for free). The first is called ESP, to help improve the tagging of visual images online, for searches. Two random people who are logged into the game at the same time are shown the same image. You can't see what the other person is typing, and the other person can't see what you're typing, but you each type in what you guess the other will type, and when you both agree, you're given a new image (the idea being that if two completely random people agree that that's a picture of "men" and not "golf," then it's probably a picture of men (even if that picture comes up on a webpage about golf).
The second game is called Peekaboom, and that one is designed to help with Artificial intelligence, and teaching computers to see. Again, two random, anonymous, humans are paired. One is shown a picture, with a keyword above it. The other person is shown a blank black square. The first person clicks on the part of the picture named in the keyword, and a tiny little bit is reveald the other person. When the other person types the correct keyword, you each get a point, and a new picture.
I tried to play ESP, and couldn't log on (my firewall was getting in the way, or the server was too busy), but I can report that Peekaboom is addictive... And I'm doing my geeky duty, too!
Here's the page that talks about his projects, with links to the games.
He's the one who invented CAPTCHA (those funny looking letter and number combinations that you have to type when you log into places and sign up for things, because humans can read weird-looking letters, and bots can't). Right now, he's started to use that system to help with putting entire libraries online... the books are being optically scanned in, and the computers can read most of the words, but not all of them. So they're taking the words the computers can't read, and putting them into those CAPTCHA boxes, and when the humans type the right words, they insert those words into their home texts...
Well, he's also come up with a couple of games (this is where he gets thousands of manhours of labor for free). The first is called ESP, to help improve the tagging of visual images online, for searches. Two random people who are logged into the game at the same time are shown the same image. You can't see what the other person is typing, and the other person can't see what you're typing, but you each type in what you guess the other will type, and when you both agree, you're given a new image (the idea being that if two completely random people agree that that's a picture of "men" and not "golf," then it's probably a picture of men (even if that picture comes up on a webpage about golf).
The second game is called Peekaboom, and that one is designed to help with Artificial intelligence, and teaching computers to see. Again, two random, anonymous, humans are paired. One is shown a picture, with a keyword above it. The other person is shown a blank black square. The first person clicks on the part of the picture named in the keyword, and a tiny little bit is reveald the other person. When the other person types the correct keyword, you each get a point, and a new picture.
I tried to play ESP, and couldn't log on (my firewall was getting in the way, or the server was too busy), but I can report that Peekaboom is addictive... And I'm doing my geeky duty, too!
Here's the page that talks about his projects, with links to the games.
