Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Patents Humans Assisting Computers
theodp writes "Amazon's latest patent, the Hybrid Machine/Human Computing Arrangement, reads like scary sci-fi, with claims covering the use of humans 'of college educated, at most high school educated, at most elementary school educated, and not formally educated' to perform subtasks dispatched by a computer. From the patent: 'For examples, the task on hand requires French speaking humans, and Task Server has requested that each subtask be performed by at least 10 humans with a past accuracy record of at least 90%.' Yikes."
predict that the first post will have something to do with our new robotic overlords....
Amazon patents "using a computer".
MABASPLOOM!
I've done that since the 80's.
bla
my computer told me not to read TFA. did i miss anything?
Amazon has already deployed such a system under the name of Mechanical Turk. The idea is that humans assist computers, providing what is cutely named artificial artifical intelligence. You can read more about the concept in an article that ACM Queue run on May 2006.
--
Code Quality: The Open Source Perspective
...but I couldn't help the machine because that
would be against the patent.
Charlie's Magic
Automaker Ford was ganted the following patent: A hybrid automobile/human driving arrangement which advantageously involves humans to assist an automobile to solve particular tasks, such as transporting a human, or other non-human items such as freight...
Just read Marshall Brain's take on the future if a system like Mechanical Turk became the standard for Management in US corporations.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
what is unique about this? what makes this qualify as non-obvious? patents generally need to be issued to people that come up with ideas the person of average skill in the relevant field could not reasonably be expected to use. in short, why is the idea of using people to solve problems that computers either can't or are very slow/ineeficient at anything new? take google for example, their new image categorization game goes along these lines- using people's brain power to tag images- so the question is: is this patent vague enough to encompass google's game or similar ideas?
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
In Soviet Russia, Computer use YOU!
Your scary sci-fi scenario sounds remarkably like modern working life - refined by years of Taylorism.
...by any chance be a viable replacement for the management where I work?
This video on Human Computation describes using humans as part of a distributed computing grid for interpretting captchas, and categorizing images.
...And they'll actually particpate, en masse -- without pay -- thinking they're just playing an online *game.*
RSS feed for this story stated
"Amazon Patents Humans Ass"
that had me rolling on the floor!
comment directly in my journal
They call it this.
;-)
But I think they have this.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's all fun and games now but it won't be funny when the machine decides your next task is to "Give me your clothes" in an Austrian accent.
... although the thought is potentially offensive to some. Wouldn't working as a wetware computer-augmenting classifier be the perfect job opportunity for a mentally handicapped person? I mean, someone with a regular IQ would find it boring over time to tell apart cats and dogs in pictures, but it sounds like a challenge for someone who is not in possession of such faculties. And this is exactly the sort of task that is troublesome for AI, while it being trivial for even "challenged" people! Cross-check the responses, reward those who vote with the consensus, and you've got something that actually might even work as a teaching tool... and how many Down's syndrome people could say they hold a "computer job"?
Don't flame me, I'm physically disabled myself and therefore am quite familiar with the troubles disabled people of all kinds face in particular when it comes to finding meaningful employment...
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
They already do this at Target.
The employees all wear walkie-talkies and I've heard them come on with an obviously computer synthesized voice telling them a "guest" needed assistance in _____ dept. Or more team members were needed to cashier, ect requesting to know who would address the issue. And they would answer back to it just like they were acknowledging their boss's orders.
The Computer is your friend.
Interactive proof system with a human prover == not terribly scary to me.
Yeah, but a patent on it is. Even more scary is a patent on a program that really just prompts the user for input.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
On the fromt page today:m l
"New Algorithms Improve Image Search" http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/03/1952205.sht
The algorithm is based on users providing input upon computer request to classify images.
You can see the type of work available for anyone to process on Amazon's Mechanical Turk right here: http://www.mturk.com/mturk/findhits?match=false
It's things like helping categorize images or finding specific things in databases of images or inspecting contracts -- you know the kind of stuff that's really easy for humans but is really difficult for computers.
I've tried a few in the past, however, most of the available "HITs" pay only a few pennies a piece, so I'm not about to go quitting my day job to sit at home fulfilling these requests quite yet.
at least 90% fo the time? I know my succses rate is only lkie 60%
Name: Mr. Anon E Mouse; SSN: 555-55-5555
Oh boy. I tell ya. The concept of patent clearly isn't part of the education system.
Imagine I invent a new kind of lawn mower. I file a patent to protect my invention for 20 years so I can commercialize it without having to worry about the existing lawn mower companies snapping up my invention and beating me to market. What's the title on the patent going to be? That's right:
"A mechanism for the automated trimming of grass."
In the patent I will describe how the mechanism works. What prior art there has been in automatted trimming of grass, why my invention is novel and how hard/easy it is to manufacture.
So will get posted to Slashdot about it?
"Man Patents Lawnmower."
Then everyone will have a bit of a moan about how the patent office doesn't know what they're doing anymore and maybe they'll quote a few lines from the patent where I'm outlining what a lawnmower is with the intention of claiming that this is what I am patenting.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I had just assumed that the OCR read the numbers wrong.