Play an online game, make a computer smarter.
.
That’s the idea behind a new site launched by scientists in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, games with a purpose, or
GWAPS. It’s the latest ingenious creation of Luis von Ahn who introduced the world to
reCAPTCHA last year, another game in which people solve puzzles and ultimately help to digitize old books by converting printed text into computer-readable letters.
The site features five fun, thinking games: ESP, Matchin, Tag a Tune, Verbosity and Squigl. ESP, the first GWAP developed by Ahn, pits the player against the computer in an effort to describe images. The game improves Web image searches by generating descriptions of uncaptioned images. Google Inc. has licensed the game, called
Google Image Labeler.
“We’re trying to make computers become more human, make them do everything we can do and more,” explains von Ahn, winner the a 2006 MacArthur Foundation genius grant and a pioneer in the field of human computation.“There’s a lot of things none of us want to do, wouldn’t it be great if we could get computers to do stuff for us?”
Software engineers Mike Crawford and Edison Tan and grad students Severin Hacker, Edith Law and Bryant Lee helped to develop the website. More games will be added as the website grows and attracts people, which in turn makes the system work.
“Human computation doesn’t work unless you have people,” von Ahn adds. “We¹ve made the games as fun as possible. We need people.”
Play gwap.com. Click
here!
Writer:
Debra SmitSource: Luis von Ahn, Carnegie Mellon University