Finding ways to use human computation power

Jessica's starter on Thursday reminded me of something. This is a Google talk from five years ago, but the ideas in it are still valid. I'll add the discussion of the talk and embed the video. If it interests you, or the concept of Google Talks interests you, you might want to look at some of the other talks as well.
If you look around at other talks, you might also find one by one of our alums, given at a time when he was still in the PhD program here.

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Google TechTalks July 26, 2006 
Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2005. Previously, Luis obtained a B.S. in mathematics from Duke University in 2000. He is the recipient of a Microsoft Research Fellowship. 

Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game -- many people play over 40 hours a week -- and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it. I describe other examples of "games with a purpose": Peekaboom, which helps determine the location of objects in images, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense knowledge. I also explain a general approach for constructing games with a purpose.