back to article New game site designed to make computers smarter

Scientists have launched a new game site designed to make computers smarter by harnessing the cognition of the humans playing the games. Gwap.com, short for games with a purpose, takes a Tom Sawyer approach to solving age-old computer problems by repackaging normally mundane tasks as online fun. The games are the brainchild of …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NSFW

    I got hardcore porn, we both chose it as the best and won!

    This idea has been done by many others, from converting books, capatchas, image recognition and tagging.

    The most original aspect is getting a match with another player a few times gives you more and more points, so people will try to guess what is the most common response. Also it asks for like or not like for some pictures instead of asking for tags or to trace an outline which should give interesting results about how people think.

  2. Pierre

    Useful?

    "As people are playing this game, they're doing something useful for the world,"

    You mean, like giving computers the ability to beat a Turing test? I for one welcome our new Turing-proofed human (or maybe not) overlords.

    One thing is sure though: Dubbya, Brown, Sarkozy, and friends, didn't benefit from this new technology. Yet. They still fail,and fail, and fail again.

  3. Rob
    Paris Hilton

    But...

    Google have been doing this for ages with their image search. Basically they get 'players' to tag images for them in an attempt to improve their hit data.

    http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

    Paris, because... well, it's google image search isn't it...

  4. Khaptain Silver badge
    Flame

    Very clever

    Once he has enough data and has developed suitable algorithms he can then sell a new product allowing the spammers to beat all and any Captcha screens.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Nice Idea but...

    do they really think that a computer can understand why a human says a photo of a cat is the same as a cartoon cat, yet a cartoon cat is not the same as a cartoon dog? or the acorn and oak leaf match when acorns and conkers do not. that is one hell of a task! good luck to them!

    Object recognition

    Object Identification

    Object classification

    Object matching

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    so...

    they want us to help computers break the anti-spam things on sites so we get MORE spam... i dont think so.

    mines the one with a large cricket bat in the pocket, i am off to find some bot-net overlords.

  7. Tim
    Thumb Down

    Eff off science man

    Why should I help a computer develop the skills it needs to start eroding my competitive advantage as a human? This can only lead us further down the path of control that we're already on with facial recognition and decision-by-computer bureacracy.

    Bring on the Butlerian Jihad.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    @Nice Idea but...

    ... Object Matching ...

    -- determine if identified object is a threat - currently all objects defined as targets

    -- COMPLETE THIS BEFORE RELEASE

    Object Threat Assessment

    Object Targeted

    Weapons Locking

    Weapons Firing

    Object Identification

    Confirm destruction

    .....MISSION COMPLETE......

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    @Nice Idea but... @AC

    Funny, Terminator was just on the telly last night....

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