Playing computer games can now achieve more than just the rosy glow of a high score. A new launching today could help 鈥渢each鈥� computers to recognise images and music just like people can.
Giving machines those abilities could help shift search results from relying on word or link counting, to being based on the material鈥檚 content.
at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has devised five 鈥済ames with a purpose鈥�. Each pits two players against each other, asking them to second-guess the other鈥檚 responses to a particular media file.
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For instance, in the 鈥淓SP Game鈥�, both players are shown the same image. The first player types a keyword they associate with it, and the second player has to guess that word. The result is a dataset of images tagged with the features people see or associate with them.
Training session
That human-generated data can be used by a search engine to intelligently 鈥渢ag鈥� the image exactly as a human would, says von Ahn. 鈥淭hen the next step would be to use that database to train computers to tag the images themselves,鈥� he says.
In another game, 鈥淭ag a Tune鈥�, both players hear an audio file and try to describe it in a few words. From those descriptions, the players are asked to guess whether they are both listening to the same file or not.
Von Ahn鈥檚 interest in the differences between how computers and humans can understand images led to his developing the software that has become central to web security protocols.
Friend or foe
It asks viewers to decipher some distorted text to verify they are a human, not a software 鈥渂ot鈥� trying to access sensitive areas of a website for nefarious purposes.
He hopes that his new games will become as popular. 鈥淲e have tested these games with a lot of people and have found that they are quite enjoyable as compared to other 鈥渃asual games鈥�,鈥� he says.
鈥淲hether this succeeds or fails is likely to rest on the incentives to play,鈥� says , director of the at Coventry University, UK. CAPTCHA is successful because users are motivated to complete the word puzzle to, say, register a new account.
Play dating
Wortley says finding ways to motivate people to play von Ahn鈥檚 new games could help them take off. 鈥淵ou could tie these games in with websites which test compatibility with a partner 鈥� dating sites, for instance,鈥� he says.
A version of the ESP Game has already been licensed by Google under the name , to improve their search results. But that raises ethical questions, thinks at the University of Southampton, UK.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a novel idea, as long as people playing the games are aware that their answers are being used in this way,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 unethical if they are not informed.鈥�
Von Ahn agrees: 鈥淎ll data we collect from the new site will be freely and publicly available,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nd we make no effort in trying to hide the real purpose of this site 鈥� even the name is a give away.鈥�
