Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Humans! Tutor Computers And Robots In Your Spare Time
It may seem like a want ad from the future, but there are positions available now for humans to tutor computer systems in identifying common objects.
Consider the ESP Game, created by Luis von Ahn, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. The "game" tricks two gullible human beings into trying to guess what the other is thinking when looking at a particular image. The real intent of the game is to improve the ability of computers to perform Internet image search by generating descriptions of uncaptioned images.
New kinds of games are available, like Tag a Tune, that lets humans describe songs to computers, and Squigl, that encourages frail humans to trace the outlines of objects in photographs to help powerful computers.
Another version of this idea is Amazon's Mechanical Turk program, which provides a programmers API to let computers ask human beings to perform a task - like object identification - that computers are not very good at.
Computers love to digitize books - when a modern font is used with a clear graphic capture, that is. When it comes to older manuscripts, there is another CMU program that uses specialized CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) called reCAPTCHAS to help computers perform optical character recognition on old books. The little word fragments are taken from books; the method is working - about one million words per day are being deciphered for CMU's book archiving project.
(CAPTCHA-based human-aided Optical Character Recognition)
As far as I know, the first person who suggested this general idea is Harry Harrison, who wrote about it in his 1956 story The Velvet Glove.
"... whenever a robot finds something it can't identify straight off... it puts whatever it is in the hopper outside your window. You give it a good look, check the list for the proper category if you're not sure, then press the right button and in she goes." An hour passed before he had his first identification to make. A robot stopped in mid-dump, ground its gears a moment, and then dropped a dead cat into Carl's hopper... Something heavy had dropped on the cat, reducing the lower part of its body to paper-thinness.Castings... Cast Iron... Cats... There was the bin number. Nine.
(Read more about human-based object recognition)
Via Roland; read more about how CAPTCHAs help preserve books and more games with a purpose at Carnegie Mellon University.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/21/2008)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Computer ")
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
Cortex 1 - Today A Warehouse, Tomorrow A Calculator Planet
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...' - Clifford Simak, 1949.
Is Agentic AI The Wrong Kind Of Smartness?
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.' - Isaac Asimov, 1975.
Jetson Orin Nano Super 70 Just $249
'Rayno folded up the microterm and tucked it back inside his jumper.' - Bruce Bethke, 1983.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Tactile Skin Supplier Map
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
Flock Stymied By 'Adversarial Fashion'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
Orb Nomad Zero-Emission Electric Aircraft
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
ICE Buys Shock Gloves Like Batman's
What else is the Caped Crusader using?
Factories In The Sky Will Surpass Those Of Earth
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
Sleeper Drones Lie in Wait
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
Warfare Goes Underground In Ukraine
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
3D Printed Organs From Space
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
Robot Bees 3D Printed By Festo
'At first I was struck by the large size of these bees..'
DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
How To Settle An Argument Between Two Robots
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
The Wind Phone Calls Those Who Have Passed On
'Only I heard that!'
Don't Want To Wear A TIght Shiny Bodysuit?
'He looked a good bit like an elderly, fat beetle.'
Light Society: Simulates Earth-Scale Society With A Billion AI Agents
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
Satyress Centaur Robot Horror Reminds Everyone Of Something
'Fess was very dutiful'
When Colds Threaten You Can't Do This - Or Can You?
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
