There's a lot of problems out there and researchers believe that humans and computers working together, resulting in their combined intelligence, holds the key to much-needed solutions.
In the journal Science, researchers from Cornell University and the Human Computation Institute (HCI) present the novel concept of human computation, the science behind systems powered by crowds, which extends outside of traditional limits to take on the hard problems of the world that until recently have been out of reach.
There is no doubt that humans are superior to machines in many things, from creative abstraction to simple recognition of patterns. However, when computers are in the picture, the cognitive abilities that people have can be taken to the next level, combining to produce a multidimensional network thriving on collaborations. These collaborations are what makes it possible for new solutions to be developed that traditional methods can only dream about.
To work, many human computation systems today send out bite-sized "micro tasks" to individuals and then stitch back together whatever results they receive. For instance, EyeWire had 165,000 volunteers analyze thousands of images on the internet to help in putting together the most complete map of neurons in the human retina in the world.
On its own, sending out micro tasks is capable of addressing the "wicked problems" of the world. It works, for certain kinds of problems, but taking care of the world's problems entails a radical approach involving numerous interacting systems that are continually changing and produce solutions that have unknown circumstances.
Human computation technologies have the ability to help, particularly the new ones that offer access to inputs from crowds in real time, where contributions are processed individually and sent to whoever's next in line for a different kind of analysis or improvement. Through this, collaborative environments that are more flexible are developed, resulting in solutions that can better address the world's most challenging problems.
An example of a human computation project is YardMap.org. It was launched in 2012 by Cornell to map out efforts at global conservation parcel by parcel. According to Janis Dickinson, one of the researchers for the study, observing and sharing practices in a social network based on maps allowed people to let others know of their individual efforts in relation to conserving working and living landscapes.
Dickinson is joined by Pietro Michelucci, HCI director, in the study.
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