Human Computation

[floringheru]

Where are these digitized books posted, have somehow adverts near? that would mean we make somebody richer :D

[DoCWaSaBe]

Really amazing, started with a great idea, identified the issues and made better in a 2nd unrelated field! Security and digitizing books, who would of thought of that!

[anon000000000000000]

lolsuck my cock fag

[1robinsong2]

-"computers cannot read distorted texts"

-"computers cannot read captchas, so typing one proves you're a human."

I'VE NEVER HEARD MORE B. S. in my LIFE.

Down the road there are about 20 billboards next to our local hospital, advertizing how great it would be to get your uterus removed by a robot. That's right--they now have robotic hyserectomies so fail-safe they boast about them on billboards.

And you want me to believe a computer can't read distorted text?

What's their hidden agenda?

[TheCanadianLemur]

@1robinsong2 You're fucking retarded.

[1robinsong2]

@TheCanadianLemur No, I'm actually using my common sense. Computers can operate on you (roboting hysterectomies at the local hospital), but they can't read wavey letters? Please. They really do think we're idiots. They wouldn't go to the trouble of thinking up this splendid lie if it weren't for a reason.

[AndYiam99]

great people with great ideas!

[ReggaeChapin76]

nosotros sabemos que en guate existen personas muy inteliguentes lo que necesitamos es apoyo de los gobiernos

[rayochapin]

@ReggaeChapin76 Tenés razon. :D

[ReggaeChapin76]

nosotros sabemos que en guate existen personas muy inteliguentes lo que necesitamos es apoyo de los gobiernos

[skadflaksguate]

great genius!! from Guatemala. Paisano sos un genio

[MuieBute]

Wasn't very smart of him to put this information out to the public. Now every time I am asked to fill a re-captcha I always put in "penis", "cock" or "vagina" to hopefully one day read one of these books that have replaced the word "and" with one of the above.

[GFAethna]

@MuieBute Bayesian filters and as mentioned "10" people verification prevents you from doing stupid shit like this.

[MuieBute]

@GFAethna As long as people get educated on this matter then they will know to all substitute the right swear word where possible, use less common ones to pass the filters and it's all good.

[necroskiss]

yay he's my professor...

[Kakashi3280]

there's 666 likes.

[Neo001100]

amazing. Thumbs up, didn't know about this, but this is very smart!

[raquelita40]

Proud that you are guatemalan:) and very smart btw.

[wittyunpredictable55]

So you're saying I pretty much own 6% of the New York Times?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!? I'll take my cut in large bills please.

[jimmayl1]

So instead of wasting 10s on some random characters, you put in 10s on one word to digitize and 10s for a known word? Doesn't sound like he's solved anything as soon as he had to add a second word.

[chipech5]

@jimmayl1 He said in another interwiew that they found out that it takes the same time to type two english words or a set of 6-8 random characters, cause obviously you concentrate longer to get the random characters right, and you can tipe the two words faster. So yo are spending the same average of 10 seconds while contributing with the digitalization.

[LiloPlease]

who knew signing up to porn websites contributed to society!

[zambatoo]

how many of you found it really really annoying?... outstanding I invented that... heh

[MikeSynonymous]

This new #CAPTCHA / #ReCAPTCHA is a fantastic symbiosis of technologies! Now people in developing countries are digitising books and newspapers! Oh the rest of us are helping, but they're doing it for a living!

[TheVisibleWind]

Awesome! I didn't even know about this.

[superjim3333]

I met him. I was chosen at school to go and interview him.

[thewiredrabbit]

I find it always amazing to read some of the moron comments made on Youtube, even on something like this! Some asshole always has to get racist. Some moron thinks that they know more (doubt that VERY much)...the GOOD news, is that you idiots actually watched this and so you learned a very cool thing. You are smarter whether you like it or not. Congratulations!

[windowsforvista]

A smart thing to do would be to make the word they already know harder to read, and try to make the word they don't know untouched

[GargamelCZ]

I *LOVE* smart ideas!

[BolnoyBratchny]

TYPE "NIGGER" FOR THE WORD THAT THE COMPUTER CAN'T READ FOR EPIC LULZ.

[Rogerdof]

@BolnoyBratchny rofl yes

[gregor00005]

yeah changed the world, and made it fucking worse.

Jesus fuck, now i have to spend more time on writing capatcha then filling in information.

It is bad and should not have been there, it should only show up on bots or wrong people, not the good guy.

Shit is bad

[SludgeBomber]

@gregor00005 If they already knew how to differ from a "bot" and a "good guy" then they wouldn't need this technology.

[BellowSucks]

@gregor00005 lolumad and stupid

[m4r71nk]

Can you imagine in the future where androids might be walking around among us, we might have to supply CAPTCHAs IRL, e.g. if we walk into a bank or even on a first date lol.

[Coachramsies]

@m4r71nk So you think you're too good for robosex? Fine more for me...

[UserHuge]

@cshcrazy As I heard it, you can't know which one of them is the 'first' (known) and which is the other (digitalized).

[ThisIsArtem]

This is a great idea in theory, but in reality, people will just fuck up the system by substituting one of the words (usually the shorter one) with things such as swears, racial slurs, etc.

[BolnoyBratchny]

@ThisIsArtem

the vast majority of people are oblivious to reCaptcha. only the people in the know will do that, such as /b/ tards.

[Sposchy]

That's pretty cool.

[Katieonealbrown]

Thank You for sharing.

[ComplexStudios]

you make money and also you advertise it time spent for something good for humanity. yea this is evil genius :D:D that's what i thought

[ComplexStudios]

this guy knows how to make money LMAO

[Gongomm]

@ComplexStudios he's digitalizing old books and giving them out for free, how is he making money?

[logicfight]

.. which is a very popular site for nerds (like me) ...

* nobody's laughing *

:P

[krackherback]

wow thats cool

[nullphp]

now ... i love (re)captchas !!!

[pam000damonium]

Ms/Mr. josealb2 -

REGARDING: OCR improvements, see "Teaching computers to read: Google acquires reCAPTCHA [from Luis Van Ahn]" at googleblog, blogspot.

[pam000damonium]

Mr/Ms QuintupleD:

Alta Vista may have developed A spammer e-mail applicant prevention program, but Prof. Manuel Blum of Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD student, Luis Van Ahn begin the CAPTCHA project, based on the Turing model, after being approached by Yahoo's chief scientist of the Internet portal, Dr. Udi Manber.

See: New York Times, December 10, 2002, page F, NY edition and "Nova Science Now", June 30, 2009, segment 'Profile: Luis Von Ahn'.

Can you share your citations?

[josealb2]

So basically you're forcing people spend their time digitizing a word for you with no possitive impact on security. Clever but I don't think that's such a great feat.

It would be interesting if the results were also used to improve OCR algorithms.

[MasterDinadan]

@josealb2 Nobody is being forced to do anything. Web admins are free to not use CAPTCHA if they so choose, and users can just opt not to use a site with a CAPTCHA.

[chrizby2]

found this via StumbleUpon. Great ideas put to work here, had no clue I was helping out like this!

[aaairaqi]

Pretty typical in science i guess. Similar concepts are invented by many people under different names. Depends on how good you market your technology!

[QuintupleD]

He did NOT invent captcha. I can't hear it anymore.

Yahoo had it at the end of the 90s.

Bastard!

[dcmeatloaf]

He developed it at Yahoo's request. Listen to the talk.

[QuintupleD]

He did not!

Andrei Broder et al had Captcha's at Alta Vista alread 1997, they just did not call it "Captcha". He started early 2000.

[cgeorge1122]

He made a joke. Lighten up.

[QuintupleD]

This joke repeated often enough make super "lightened up" people like you believe it. Well done!

[SlimD11]

Captcha!

[Johnnyart2000]

"Excellent, I had no idea what this was about; I watched it because of the high rating - Keep up the great work!" Thanks

[XANDERXXZ]

love the accent. :-)

[IIvveennss]

Clever fucker [2]

[Phazonaddict]

This is brilliant. Clever fucker, I have to say.

[wdmax]

Effin Cool! Now that's what I call being resourceful. Beautifully Amazing! WOW!

[hurryupandw8t]

So, in order to make sure that you're not a computer, you'll be used in a manner similar to a computer?

What if YouTube comment submissions used some form of Captchas? or twitter tweets? or cellphone txt msgs? or everyday conversations?!

*slips into coma to dream of electric sheep shaped like clouds which calculate the weather*

[DrFlanigan]

And barely anyone will know they are being used, so who cares.

This guy is awesome.

[MrStimpy77]

OpenCaptcha-dot-org .. I started it, come on now, who's with me?? Any geeks out there??

[volatilegx]

The NY Times is so bad because they actually use CAPTCHA output to write their articles.

[ginia01]

This is why nerds RULE. This was so imformative and I'll pass it on.

[elainemadsen]

Stunning. I can't believe I watched the whole thing - but I'm so glad I did and am happy to know I helped. Now, the question is have they digitized my own books? And will I and  other authors be happy about this?

[god4334]

the world is your computer

[josh48315]

lately i've been hearing/reading people saying that the NY times sucks, and it's not what it used to be

[fwend12345]

To hell with the New York Times

[peripatetikerQC]

major dork

[ThePanegyriccc]

6:45 absurd and inpracticable!

Plato, as EMerson once said can mean a thousands, ten thousand things to the world, depending in who reads him...

[ThePanegyriccc]

As much as I admire Luis, he is not a gifted storyteller I'll tell ya!

No two glories are ever found together usually. He just repeats his speeches in exactly the same way over and over and over again.

Go Luis, you are a brilliant scientist, though not a very brilliant speaker.

[Schpudd]

I didn't really find anything wrong with his presentation, he was fluent and captured my interest.

You can't argue the time's being put to better use.

[chinchonchinchon]

@Schpudd, he is a gifted scientis nobody denies that, the problem is that he repeats the same speech over and over again.

[anonymous6366]

so does youtube use reCaptcha now or is it still on the old one?

[keepitcrisp2009]

nice idea...

[determinist48]

Brilliant!  Deserves an award. How about other applications like voluntary Captchas site? Make it an online GAME! If a million people did ten captchas that would be the same as ten million doing one. Kind of like seti@home thing, or pooled computing.

[g0liat]

He wants to reuse the time of the people by adding an extra word? It sounds to me that he is stealing extra time

[fcommmisso]

oh...did he mention they now have access to what we type in web-forms where there are capchas? scary...

[PureAwesome92]

Pure genious. So incredibly smart yet so simple at the same time Love it!

[CianLR]

Bad Christians. LOL

[jeremystanford]

1. But now it takes them twice as long to do the captcha.

2. This has been around for years now.

Good work though ;)

[jonyboy10000]

It's not always "check word" "book word". Secondly they take an average of 10 people (or whatever number)

[kionay]

wow, thats pretty neat

[Nsways]

After watching this clip, I am confident that humanity can fix its self in terms of poverty and medicine. It is recyclable and intangible knowledge like this that will help fix the world. 6% of the worlds population is doing something good and they aren't even aware of it.

[sbhusi]

Really wonderful.

[amitkgupta28]

One the most awesome thing I've seen.....

[nodakim13]

It sucks,first of all,sometimes i have to spend 5 damn minutes looking at the picture and thinking "Why the fuck is this word so hard to read".

And it doesnt work.

[JerrySinefield]

You must be a bot then.

[nodakim13]

Captcha says I am.

So I must be,right?

[JerrySinefield]

Yeah, I'm sorry man. You should probably try to get yourself debugged then.

[ifteebuet]

superb

[georgesman33]

Wow, Excellent.

[Hilariousity]

dEAth to the CAPTCHA!

[Nibiru2O12]

wow. this guys smart!

[Maplemis0]

@Nibiru2O12 u can here that in his voice hes a geek...

but so am i :D rock on dude ur waisting ten second of my life :D

[MrNewyorkslim]

@Nibiru2O12 this is the son of a whore that invented captcha

[yasmile]

does anyone know the name of the song playing at the beginning of this??

[opinion56]

whats the intro song? I have heard it freakin everywhere but nobody seems to know what it is

[dcmeatloaf]

"Pendulum" -- a free sample from Garageband.

[mrmango786]

Love his voice.

[Michemily]

Brilliant. Thank you.

[KnightSama]

I heard someone could decipher the reCaptchas,

[pinochet222]

this is really cool, but also shows that we need smarter computers)

[oipaloi]

I do like the fact that you are using captchas to digitize text. However saying that compters can not, or can not do it well; is patently false.

Morphological regularization neural networks make short work of captchas. Using a feature set of around 20, will make any captcha I have ever seen; it's bitch.

However, I doubt that many spammers have graduate degrees in engineering. They are usually scrip kiddies.

[DusteDdekay]

@oipaloi if that were true, programs to do OCR would never fail.

[ShitDizzleTheThird]

@DusteDdekay

It's still not impossible to have a program read the text, there just seems to be a lack of them that can... so far. Or so I've seen, as many programs do indeed fail to read them.

[GoddardRaines]

Nice try. Keep it up  check out esteembpo + com for social media marketing. uhgj

[YourChessCoach]

Wow! This was fascinating! Amazing use of the technology.

[OsamaPP]

that was a good idea

[junapedrito1990]

After spending some time in their site, I think reCAPTCHA is a great band name generator.

[rickandrollyou1]

Or RESTART

[jeromewhite2000]

I like the guy who waited after the word was WAIT.

[junapedrito1990]

Super instructional.

I tried it and my reCAPTCHA was: "husband discard"

:)))))))

Hahhaaha

[greatgregg1982]

!!!!!!

reCaptcha

is

truly

awesome

!!!!

[Stele007]

Now if only they could fix the audio recaptchas so it's possible to understand what to type

[tuboidal]

Really great on so many levels. But, in your Utopian zeal for efficiency, are you ensuring that the words that we human techno-slaves are converting for recaptcha for free are being offered back to us for free? Do you charge recaptcha API users for the service and profit from the effort? What is the underlying economic exchange? The NYTimes archive only gives the first paragraph as text. We have to read the rest from the original image, for example. The consumer is likely being duped again.

[raazstone]

Good said, I have run into this problem when I was doing research for my history class project.

I found some good old articles in the New York Times but they would charge like 2 or 3 dollars ( I forgot the exact amount) for every article downloaded.

[tuboidal]

Someone should file a class action lawsuit against reCaptcha demanding that -

1. consumers be paid for their work to date, or

2. all material deriving from human computation remain in the public domain

We would see how quickly the economic model would come to light. If we're doing work, we should be paid. Otherwise, if the company is stealing human computational power in the guise of the greater good and profiting from it, as are their customers, then it is basic exploitation.

[tuboidal]

The only possible counter-argument is that, since users use sites like Facebook for free, their computation could be construed as a reasonable exchange. However, customers like NYT should be paying reCaptcha for computation and reCaptcha should be paying the sites that use their APIs along the lines of Adsense. Further, users should be notified that they are doing work in exchange for access to the destination site as part of the T.O.S.. I'm all for it, but don't steal the work product.

[StarvMarv]

i hate captcha!

[gucker07]

Great idea!

[Allaxxiana]

nice lol cleeever i need some smarts!!

[buzwazfuz]

i think i just listened to someone talk about captchas,

[Allaxxiana]

clever i might go into computer science after this,

[Allaxxiana]

why dont u just pay someone to type the whole book instead of digitising it

[allergic2kryptonite]

All the effort this guy made inventing the captcha and now the recaptcha , now he's gonna hafta re-re-invent it when hack-chas find a way around the recaptcha

[Rapture2k1]

He answers that specifically at 8:15. You're given 2 words; 1 is the OCR mistake/unknown, the other is legit/known. Then it takes the results of 10 or so users which correctly guessed the known words and then takes the unknown word for granted see as they all entered the same results.

[mchopsky]

This is super. Very well spoken for such a smart man. What I'm curious is how does the Captcha/Recaptcha program know what the image says?

[kimedar]

ANTICAPTCHAHAHAAHAAA

[hombrepancho]

... basically all work done is with English language

I wonder about expanding the possibilities of this project, i.e. more languages

For example, the problem of getting with random system, according to Mr. Luis, is sometimes embarrassing (he did as an example "bad Christians") - but not if you put two words coming from different languages. This would help diversity of cultures survive as well (hope he is reading this).

[Zetimenvec]

except the internet is pretty much globally expected to be in English with very few exceptions. The global language is now becoming English, and expecting people to know other alphabets or even be able to type them on their keyboard is going too far in my opinion. Even languages that use the same alphabet have strange nuances not found in English, things like üíóâàè, how do you expect people who are willing to wait when it says "wait" to be able to type such characters?

[waveoflight]

What a great way to get a banana.

[lvecsey]

very good. everything he presented fit together very nicely

[Mattheflamme]

Brilliant

[orgologo]

this man is a genius!!

[oisiaa]

How does Google do this for Google Books?

[ichthyo]

Damn liberal! :D

[devilsfan098]

Pure genius.

[daz3dpanda]

amazing, you could tell from his voice, he was excited presenting this amazing presentation =)

[SarahxJane]

I was wondering why I had one that said, "$10,000-$9,000 hike"

Who knows, maybe that was in a book.

Gosh, that's neat.

[KICKERMAN360]

Probably the best online money scheme ever. a) He makes money from making books digitally b) He gets people to sign up free c) He makes users do it for free. He's a genius!

[xavster]

na, it's called computer science.

[KICKERMAN360]

It takes more than computer science to put Digitizing Printed Articles and Books and Human Verification together. ;)

[DrIce926]

It's not a scheme if you're making the world a better place.

[KeenFob]

this guy is a good presenter to say the least

[Antipodal]

that was awesome.

[cookiexcmonster]

That makes so much sense. Although, because I figured out that it only needed you to figure out the easier to read work I stopped typing the harder words. This could be a problem if more people figure this out.

[GLeNss]

AMAZING!

[NonCommente]

that is amazing

[MajorPaid]

Reddit owns. Such a simple and brilliant idea

[letseatlunch]

4:04 LOL omg i want to work there

[blueoctober1121]

now we all have to type the word "penis" into all the recaptcha and spam all digitized books with penis!

[ohthissucks]

That was amazing.

[krackatraxxx]

great video! I had no idea that so much time was wasted by people putting in captcha's!

[GasificationMan]

Very cool....

[annoyingloginssuck]

Are there safeguards against, for instance, what 4chan did to bypass the Times' recaptchca by entering "penis" for every word, or will the New York Times now have random sprinklings of the word throughout their archives?

[krackatraxxx]

4chan wasn't successful as there are restrictions against something like that happening already in place.

[Thundergo]

no im pretty sure 4chan won because moot got voted most influential person of the year and the top voted people spelled out "marblecake"