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 ")
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.
Automatic Bot Traffic Is 38 Percent Of HTTP Requests
'there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net...' - John Brunner, 1975
Neuroplatform Human Brain Organoid Bioprocessor Uses Less Electricity
'Cultured brains on a slab.'- Peter Watts, 1999
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
The Zapata Air Scooter Would Be Great In A Science Fiction Story
'Betty's slapdash style.'
Thermostabilized Wet Meat Product (NASA Prototype)
There are no orbiting Michelin stars. Yet.
Could Crystal Batteries Generate Power For Centuries?
'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
India Ponders Always-On Smartphone Location Tracking
'It is necessary... for your own protection.'
Amazon Will Send You Heinlein's Knockdown Cabin
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
Is It Time To Forbid Human Driving?
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
Replace The Smartphone With A Connected Edge Node For AI Inference
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
Artificial Skin For Robots Is Coming Right Along
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
Robot Guard Dog On Duty
I might also be thinking of K-9 from Doctor Who.
Wearable Artificial Fabric Muscles
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
BrainBridge Concept Transplant Of Human Head Proposed
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.'
Google's Nano Banana Pro Presents Handwritten Math Solutions
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.'
Edible Meat-Like Fungus Like Barbara Hambly's Slunch?
'It was almost unheard of for slunch to spread that fast...'
Sunday Robotics 'Memo' Bot Has Unique Training Glove
'He then started hand movements of definite pattern...'
Woman Marries Computer, Vonnegut's Dream Comes True
'Men are made of protoplasm... Lasts forever.'
Natural Gait With Prosthetic Connected To Nervous System
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
