Summary:
The key motivation of this paper is to distinguish the definition of human computation with other terms such as “crowdsourcing”. The author also explored the accurate definition of human computation and developed the classification system so that it provides directions for research on human computation. The author also analyzed human computation and demonstrated the key idea with a graph. The graph includes the motivation of people who work on this computation, how to control the quality and how to aggregate the work. Finally, what kind of skills required for human computation, and the regular process order for them. There are several overlaps between human computation and other terms. The definition of human computing is summarized by the author based on all kinds of definition source as two main points: First, the problem fit the general computing paradigm so could be solved one day. Second, human participants are guided by computing systems or processes. The author compared human computation with related ideas and present a classification system based on the six most significant distinguishing factors. This paper is mainly about the taxonomy of human computation, however, the author indicates the future usage of these classifications and the future direction of research such as the issues related to ethics and labor standards.
Reflection:
This article provides a clear definition of human computation, which I think is the most important step before trying to explore more information or expressing any opinion on this topic. I prefer the definition “…a technique to let humans solve tasks, which cannot be solved by computers.”, although we know these problems could be solved one day with the development of technology. Just look at the motivation indicated by the author, I would consider the human computation is an inevitable trend as the reveal of the deficiency of Artificial Intelligent and as the need of network users. There is an interesting contradiction that happens to me when I was read the paper. When I check the graph of the “classification system for human computation systems overview”, I found the author indicates one of the motivations is altruism. I was skeptical and I do not believe until I saw the example, “thousands of online volunteers combed through over 560,000 satellite images hoping to determine Gray’s location, who was missing during a sailing trip in early 2007”, I think it’s the best reason. The book “ghost work” could be one type of work that included in human computation definition in the paper. The motivation of their work is payment, and a different job has a different process order. The tag of the picture could be considered as “Worker->Requester->Computer(WRC)”, while the Uber driver’s case might be “Computer-> Woker->Requester”. This paper is a summary and classification of the present state of human computation, without any innovative ideas. However, the follow-up work that the author put forward at the end is worth discussing. Especially the topic of issues related to ethics and labor standards. We do not have any kind of regulation for this mode of work. Thus, how to protect the workers? How to prevent the product from intentional destruction. How human computation will develop in the future？
Questions:
- Do you think the field of human computation will exist for a long time? Or will soon be replaced by the highly developed AI？
- What aspect of human computation do you think will involve an ethical problem?
- Which description in this paper more in line with ghost work?
- Can we find any other examples of the motivation or quality control of human computation?
I think human computation will still exist for a relatively long time, because I think it is much more difficult for AI to completely simulate human thinking. In the process of future research and development, human participation is also required.
It is interesting that you analyzed the previous week’s readings with this article. I agree with how you studied the cases.
I also found altruism to be very funny. I almost thought the authors left it as a joke before looking at the example.
Thinking about your questions,
1. Going back to last week’s ghost work, they introduced the concept of paradox of automation’s last mile. If this concept is true, then no, I don’t think there ever will be a day where AI completely replaces humans.
2. I think ethics is in the end up to the designer of the system. AI is easily biased without proper learning environment tuning and can lead to ethical problems. The designer of the system should be aware of this and prevent incidents from happening.
3. The key point in the ghost work reading was that the population who do the work cannot easily be tracked. All the people were doing it for a good schedule and income. I think this relates to the motivation’s pay category.
4. Maybe competence for quality control? A good competition between people often results in better results.
I think the workers in some of the industries will be soon replaced by AI. However, for some industries, which require workers to do some complex job, even highly developed AI cannot replace human workers or at least, human supervisors are still needed. I think the belongings of the work may raised ethical problems. As the work requires both the human workers and the system, it is hard to tell whether the contributions belong to software developer or the workers.
I, too, initially had a problem with altruism as I read this paper. However, after reading that entire section, I realized that the area of Citizen Science (or citizens performing crowd tasks in order to advance a scientific pursuit, see galaxy zoo) should likely fall under this category. I’m not sure it’s entirely altruistic, but there was no possible other category for this kind of human computation.
To answer one of your questions, I honestly believe any task that remits payment to a worker can be an ethical problem. Outside of the 2-3 better companies listed in last week’s Ghost Work, there seemed to be ethical issues with all of them, where workers are essentially being abused for being incredibly replaceable. I’ve soured immensely on the whole idea based on the stories from this and other outlets. Yesterday there was a near horrifying news article on Gizmodo about crowdworkers and some of the abuses they endure, like looking at dead bodies or abuse in order to “properly label” images.