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Human Computation (Solving billion dollar problems without

much effort)

- By Ramandeep Singh( CSE-

1, 1st year )

I want to start by asking you a question, do you remember filling up some weird

words while creating an email account( lets say Yahoo, Gmail, etc). Even while

signing up on Facebook (there you go). Dont get annoyed with such words as you

might be surprised that you are playing a huge role in solving some complex real -

world problems.

Have you heard about a computer game Foldit? Its not just a game. Its a smart

gaming simulation where users contribute to science by folding proteins.

Shocked?

HEAR ME NOW, BELIEVE ME LATER!

In traditional computation, a human employs a computer to solve a problem; a human provides aformalized problem description to a computer, and receives a solution to interpret. Human-based

computation frequently reverses the roles; the computer asks a person or a large group of people to solve

a problem, then collects, interprets, and integrates their solutions. There are a number of problems in this

world which are being solved almost everyday with the help of this great concept of human computation. I

would like to point out one such problem of spam which Yahoo was facing some years ago.

Senior scientists at Yahoo approached The School of Computer Science at Carnegie

Mellon University to ask for help with spam.

And later that year, they came up with a solution which is today better known as

Captcha. A Captcha is a program that can generate and grade tests that humans

can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read

distorted texts as the one shown below, but computer programs cannot.

But there is a problem associated with this ground breaking concept. Think about

this, arent humans wasting their time typing such Captcha? Each time you type a

Captcha, essentially you waste ten seconds of your time. And if you multiply that by

200 million, you get the humanity as a whole wasting like wasting 500 thousand

hours everyday typing these annoying Captcha.

Do you think if there is a way in which this human effort can be used for something

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beneficial for the humanity. Can we make good use of those ten seconds. You might

be surprised but you arent really wasting your time. You are helping in digitizing

old books, old newspapers, etc. You might be surprised to know but in last few

months, 20 years of New York Times archive has already been digitized by letting

people do a single word at a time.

I hope this idea gives Computer Science majors( and closely related fields like

Electrical ) an idea about what all possibilities are there in our field. Computer

Science is a discipline that is undergoing a great deal of change. Its really about

some sort of you know stimulating your imagination and start thinking about the

various possibilities. And there are number of people who feel like they have never

really lost that sort of sense of play.