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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."
Amazon patents "using a computer".
MABASPLOOM!
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...
Mod parent up
On the "Data Improvement" front, I implemented something like this maybe 5 or 6 years ago. The company had a workforce of "lower" cost data entry staff, and when volumes of data came in over the web, we validated what we could programmitically, then routed questional records to human staff for cleanup and use in building a dictionary of sorts that made our automated process better. It was more cost effective to go this hybrid computing route than to throw lots of "expensive" programming at it.
-mls
The irony is that if they had patented it, you'd be the one rolling on the floor, but they'd be the ones laughing your ass off.
... 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.
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.