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Games With A Purpose Help With Tasks That Tax Computers
Posted by
timothy
on Wed May 14, 2008 03:22 PM
from the because-computers-are-dum dept.
from the because-computers-are-dum dept.
Falkkin writes "Luis von Ahn and his team at Carnegie Mellon University have launched GWAP, a new web site for 'Games With A Purpose.' By playing these online games, humans help provide data for problems that are hard for computers to solve, such as computer vision and sound classification. Slashdot has previously covered other human computation projects by Dr. von Ahn, including the ESP Game and reCAPTCHA. The new web site contains a re-vamping of the ESP Game as well as four completely new games." (Falkkin also points to an AP story on GWAP and to coverage at the BBC.)
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Games With A Purpose Help With Tasks That Tax Computers
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All games have a purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to give it a try.... (Score:4, Informative)
shoulda said that as AC (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Everyone? benefits (Score:5, Interesting)
What search engine? Is the information I provide to them free for anyone to use, or is it just for them?
Re:Everyone? benefits (Score:4, Informative)
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Everyone benefits? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that's EXACTLY the kind of line I'd expect Skynet to use.
Porn for Captcha? (Score:4, Insightful)
Using a large amount of real intelligence can make some problems easier, if a human can do it much easier, and some amount of noise is acceptable in the output.
I'm too busy with GTA4 (Score:2)
I'm not knockin the interface, it's great, but if I went to any 12 year old it would bore them to tears after 1 minute, with them whining "Can we play another game?"
Here's an idea. Give some OLPC's to kids in 3rd world countries. Teach them to read, then pay them $0.01 per problem they solve. Then sell your DB of solutions to Google for $0.03 a solution.
I like Squigl (Score:4, Informative)
Computers aren't getting smarter... (Score:1, Insightful)
As far as I can see, this is not making computers smarter. That is, it's not helping to teach them how to do the tasks given novel situations in the future. It's simply using aggregate human interaction to do tasks that are poorly suited for computers to do still--CAPTCHAs and image recognition.
This is just a way for the company to get hundreds (thousands?) of people to do menial tasks under the guise of having fun. Wouldn't it be better if we actually worked on automating these actions instead?
I'll be impressed when computers are able to take my tags on, say, a photo of my dog, and apply the same tag to other photos of dogs. Until then, this is just distributed work being done by a bunch of people.
Re:Computers aren't getting smarter... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll be impressed when humans are able to tag images without using anything learned from correctly tagged data to do so.
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Re:Computers aren't getting smarter... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Computers aren't getting smarter... (Score:4, Interesting)
He's got lots of neat results from that system in the talk. [google.com] Go watch it.
Parent
Another Collection Attempt. (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't this initiative similar to that launched by Chris McKintrey and Pushpinder Singh, both of whom created databases where questions used to aid in trying to give robots personality?
Didn't both of these projects fail for the same reason?
I'm sure that Slashdot actually covered this story, but for those interested, the link is here. [wired.com]
Never fails (Score:1, Interesting)
FoldIt (Score:2)
OK, so I gave FoldIt a go (it's at fold.it). It's based on the idea of using lots of people to do protein folding rather than automating it or giving the task to phDs. The main gameplay elements are two buttons, "shake" and "wiggle." You basically just move the strands around randomly, then push those two buttons until you hit an acceptable score. Maybe there's more depth to it, but that's about all I could surmise.
Still pretty fun though, and it runs in Wine.
My one piece of advice: make sure the password for the site account doesn't have any funny characters in it. It will say "yeah, sure, that's a fine password" when you register, but if you ever try to use it it will tell you it's wrong, and the password recovery process is utterly broken. You are given a single-use login token, which claims that it's directing you to a page where you can set up a new password, but all you'll ever be taken to is an "access denied" page. So standard web interface stuff, I suppose. *sigh*
foldit??? (Score:1)
Luis von Ahn (Score:2, Interesting)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143 [google.com]
As for von Ahn, I am currently studying computer science at Carnegie Mellon and I was lucky enough to have him as a professor (along with Godel prize winner Steven Rudich) for one of the most difficult classes at the school, Great Theoretical Ideas of Computer Science (15-251). He is very interesting and entertaining, and was able to teach much of the course material through games - though they are in no way the same types of games as the ones in the article.
At one point, I wanted to help him with the CAPTCHAs and their future direction (since they are becoming increasingly easy to crack and increasingly harder for humans to pass), but I was rebuffed. He is a cool guy with an aura of arrogance/confidence which does him well. I am glad to see he is making some progress.
Yeah, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
tps reports with a purpose (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia Game Plays YOU! [serious content] (Score:2)
Re:Games with a purpose? (Score:1)
Parent
Re:Also: how to wash a car (Score:2)
Nice way to put a dent in the hood. Then they can play "Bodyshop Bill Blues" or "PleaseYourHonourItWasJustAGame!!!"
Parent
Re:LOL, JS issues..... (Score:1)
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