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Human Computation
Most of my time is spent inventing novel techniques for ...
One family of techniques is CAPTCHA, automated tests tha ...
Another family is exemplified by my work on The ESP Game ...

Luis von Ahn's Research
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/research.html

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Human Computation

Most of my time is spent inventing novel techniques for utilizing the computational abilities (or "cycles") of humans.


One family of techniques is CAPTCHA, automated tests that humans can pass but that current computer programs cannot. CAPTCHAs take advantage of the power of human cycles in order to differentiate people from computers, and have many applications in practical security. The previous results of my joint work with Manuel Blum, for instance, are used by Yahoo! to ensure that only humans obtain free email accounts.

Another family is exemplified by my work on The ESP Game. ESP is a seductive online game -- many people play over 40 hours a week! -- and when people play they help determine the content of images on the Web by providing meaningful labels for them. If the game is played as much as other popular online games, all images on the Web can be labeled in just a few weeks. Attaching proper labels to all images on the Web would allow for more accurate image search, would improve the accessibility of Web sites, and would help Web browsers block pornography. This approach to labeling images is simple but novel: rather than using computer vision techniques that don't work well, we encourage people to do the work for us by taking advantage of their desire to be entertained. The ESP Game has collected over 10 million labels for images on the Web.

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<center><span class="normal"><span class="black"><b>Human Computation </b> </span> </span></center> <span class="normal"> <br> Most of my time is spent inventing novel techniques for utilizing the computational abilities (or "cycles") of humans. </span><span class="small"><br><br> </span><span class="normal"> One family of techniques is <b><a href="http://www.recaptcha.net" class="normal">CAPTCHA</a></b>, automated tests that humans can pass but that current computer programs cannot. CAPTCHAs take advantage of the power of human cycles in order to differentiate people from computers, and have many applications in practical security. The previous results of my joint work with Manuel Blum, for instance, are used by Yahoo! to ensure that only humans obtain free email accounts. </span><span class="small"><br><br> </span><span class="normal"> Another family is exemplified by my work on <b><a href="http://www.espgame.org" class="normal"> The ESP Game</a></b>. ESP is a seductive online game -- many people play over 40 hours a week! -- and when people play they help determine the content of images on the Web by providing meaningful labels for them. If the game is played as much as other popular online games, all images on the Web can be labeled in just a few weeks. Attaching proper labels to all images on the Web would allow for more accurate <a href="http://www.peekaboom.org/cgi-bin/phetch/search-esp" class="normal"><b>image search</b></a>, would improve the accessibility of Web sites, and would help Web browsers block pornography. This approach to labeling images is simple but novel: rather than using computer vision techniques that don't work well, we encourage people to do the work for us by taking advantage of their desire to be entertained. The ESP Game has collected over 10 million labels for images on the Web. </span><span class="small"><br></span>