The Conscripted Human Workforce
by
Randy Mears
A 2007 Young Innovator article in the MIT Technology Review caught my attention today, but probably not for the intended reason. The article was about Luis von Ahn, one of the innovators (along with Manuel Blum) credited with coining the term "captchas" as well as commercially introducing captchas on Yahoo back in 2000. Captchas are those twisted strings of characters that you often have to decipher to prove that you are human when interacting with a public web site. Since captchas were introduced, over six years ago, they have been popping up like mushrooms; so much so that they can now be characterized as ubiquitous.
In the article von Ahn laments about having felt bad because of the world-wide aggregate amount of time that has been wasted, by humans, solving these little 10 second brain teasers. I bought his lamentations for a minute until I got to the part where he created a new trick that likely doubles that time; he calls it a "recaptcha".
First of all, I don’t think it is a waste of time to solve a web site’s captcha because it serves a purpose directly related to both the security and quality of content for public web sites. It ultimately serves to ensure that things like spambots can’t overwhelm discussion groups with, well, spam. This is beneficial to all parties (except the spammers).
The recaptcha is a little gem of an idea that gives you a pair of captchas requiring you to solve the real one along with what I will call an outrigger. The real one gives you access to the site and the outrigger uses your human brain, as a Mechanical Turk, to make a contribution to the solution of some other problem; one that may be of no interest to you, as an end user. So, in my view, the recaptcha turns something that isn’t really wasting a user’s time (proving that you are human), into to something that probably is (solving someone else’s problem).
What I really don’t like about this idea is that it falls into that "slippery slope" category. It starts when we are all tricked into doing an extra task, to which we graciously give tacit approval, and then it quickly snowballs as it goes mainstream. My experience with the Internet is that, if someone can figure out how to make money by automating something (like accomplishing little tasks using someone else’s brain) then you can be sure it will become the next big net-nuisance - or worse!
So, although I can see the point behind captchas (they probably are necessary as a means of keeping spam bots from overtaking the world), and I accept that they are a necessary evil - I don’t necessary like them. Recaptchas, on the other hand, have the potential to become a stealthful way to conscript a human workforce; an unnecessary idea that I find just a little creepy.
