Games With A Purpose Help With Tasks That Tax Computers

Falkkin writes "Luis von Ahn and his team at Carnegie Mellon University have launched GWAP, a new web site for 'Games With A Purpose.' By playing these online games, humans help provide data for problems that are hard for computers to solve, such as computer vision and sound classification. Slashdot has previously covered other human computation projects by Dr. von Ahn, including the ESP Game and reCAPTCHA. The new web site contains a re-vamping of the ESP Game as well as four completely new games." (Falkkin also points to an AP story on GWAP and to coverage at the BBC.)

Comments

I was going to give it a try....

[cstdenis]

I was going to give it a try, but it requires registration and I really just can't be bothered to register.

Re:Everyone? benefits

[Anonymous Coward]

Says here that "All data we collect from the new site will be freely and publicly available"

I like Squigl

[Falkkin]

After playing with the site for a while, I especially like Squigl... basically you and a partner draw an outline around an object in an image. If you play, make sure you check the "auto-submit when done" button, it helps save precious time :)

Another Collection Attempt.

[MrCrassic]

Isn't this initiative similar to that launched by Chris McKintrey and Pushpinder Singh, both of whom created databases where questions used to aid in trying to give robots personality?

Didn't both of these projects fail for the same reason?

I'm sure that Slashdot actually covered this story, but for those interested, the link is here.

Re:Computers aren't getting smarter...

[PaintyThePirate]

You missed the point. You can't just magically automate something like object recognition. You can, however, train filters on computers based on how humans identify objects in images.