Google Image Labeler

vandalman writes to tell us that Google is betting on the obsessive compulsive need for many users to see big numbers next to their name with a new beta service called Google Image Labeler. From the description: "You'll be randomly paired with a partner who's online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you've seen and the websites where those images were found. And we'll show you the points you've earned throughout the session."

Comments

Too small pics

[avij]

This is indeed a creative way to enhance the search results. Some of the pictures could be a little bit larger though.. Or some kind of a mouse-over which shows a larger picture.

looks good

[LiquidCoooled]

its just taken me 4 minutes to accumulate ~1000 points, there are people who have accumulated 190000 points.

Thats playing the google game solidly for around 12 hours (less if they are good).

Congrats to those people!

As for myself, I found the image sizes too small, but I suppose we are basing the keywords on first impressions and are expected to come from the image search.

I found myself squinting to see what it was meant to be and wasting time, even if it was just 2x larger (scaled would do, no real need for more data) I would spend time there, its actually quite fun especially since you are aiming to get more than your random competitor.

Oh boy, points

[lurker412]

And those points will get me what?

Re:Oh boy, points

[Kohath]

Was she spending time with your daughter while giving you this lecture?

Maybe you should talk to her about that.

Geez that's addictive

[Mateo_LeFou]

I'm not sure why... Google's brilliance shines through again.

Re:Content Based Image Retrieval

[sparkz]

At the end, it says "Thanks for your contribution. It will help us improve the relevance of image search results so that you and other Google users can quickly and easily find the results you're looking for." Which is better at recognising what's in a picture? A human, who can say "oh look, that's Natalie Portman pouring hot grits down her pants", not a computer which will just say "a person" at best.

Eyes of the Calculor

[Buzz_Litebeer]

Google is now harnessing a distributed operating system, you and me. They use games to get us to essentially program for them and reduce error by having multiple people do the same task and use what answers come out.

Very clever. Of course this was done by Amazon as well I think and I dont know what has come of that effort.

But it really means that they are using the processing power of people to avoid having to create artificial intelligence. And why not? Just use real intelligence from people and let them enjoy it by thinking it is a game!

Scaling the small images

[TubeSteak]

Opera 7.54 (what I have installed on this puter) scales images nicely.

Ctrl + mouse wheel up/down = zoom in or zoom out.

I imagine the most recent 9.x still has that feature.

I can't vouch for this site: http://www.obermair.net/opera/operausben.htm but it was near the top of Google's results for a no-install version of Opera 9.01

Re:Actually Google Licensed It

[Spezzer]

A lecture given by Von Ahn on Human Computation is available here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-824646398 0976635143

Lowest common denominator

[Dan East]

Lowest common denominator, that's the quality of results they'll end up with. I might see a picture and label it "bird", where my partner, being an ornithologist, labels its exact scientific and common names. Until he enters "bird" we don't get a match.

Dan East

Game results in dumb labels

[QuestionsNotAnswers]

After playing for a short while, you realise that there is a common set of words that everyone knows are the best first tries.

Lady, Girl, Man seem to be really common (even if not right) and colours too.

So it soon ends up that pictures are labelled by the words that help you win, rather than the most appropriate words for the image.

Re:GAMES

[Pahroza]

While I agree that there should be some bonus time for doing well, I can understand that they don't want to give you too much feedback. The way I see it, the point is to get a good cross section of what people would label an image, not find the 2 people that see each image the same way. If you've got people doing really well together, then they obviously see things the same, and it is probably time to pair you up with someone else.

Re:More like a creative way to get work for free..

[ultranova]

Seems kinda sinister to me. Personally I would like to gather the rewards for my own efforts, not allow some megacorp to do so.

Careful, now; that attitude makes you sound like a communist. It is the basic idea behind the Communist Manifesto: workers should reap the benefits of their own efforts, this requires that everyone owns the means of production he uses, and since a factory can't be operated by a single person alone, it should be owned communally by all the workers working there who can then share the profits between themselves instead of having a rich capitalist - megacorp in these times - pocket them.

Your desire to gain the benefit from your own work is, therefore, completely un-American. The capitalist way of doing things is that you do the work, the investors get the profits, and you get to compete with the Indians for who can survive with the lowest wage. Since India has a much lower cost of living, you're going to lose. Since your economy is bleeding money to India, the buying power of the people of your country is going to shrink, making it more neccessary for corporations to try to cut costs by hiring more Indians, and the situation is going to get worse and worse.

Sure makes you glad to live in a capitalist country, doesn't it ? And sure makes this post likely to be modded down by free-market fundamentalists who don't quite understand that communism ("people should own the means of production they use, and if a particular means needs more than one people to operate, then those people should own it communally") is not exclusive to free market ("everyone is free to produce what they want and trade with whoever they will").

Mod me down, but I'm still right.