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CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

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Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#81

Post by ChrisRR »

canofbars wrote: post #15

Anyone with a half functioning brain can figure out which ones are the taxis. Taxis are not yellow in my country and I would have no issue picking those out. They have the very distinctive sign on the roof that no normal car has. Not even OP was confused by this, they are just complaining on the behalf of some theoretical person who might get confused.

That's just a US thing, and if you aren't familiar with that, then you won't recognise it as a taxi.

Here in the UK, taxis are normally just normal cars with vinyl stickers on the side. I think many people would associate the sign on the top with being a driving instructor's car

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#82

Post by rehemiau »

I'm not American and I often see captchas that ask about "cars" or "trucks". And they use similar images. I sometimes don't pass through those. My question is, when I see a truck and I'm being asked to select all cars, should I select the truck or not? For me a truck is a car. Is it not one?

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#83

Post by ChrisRR »

AntiImperialist wrote: post #42

I deliberately give some wrong answers to CAPTCHA questions. A lot of the times, it is accepted.

It's not just measuring your answers, it's also judging your mouse movements to determine if they're human-like

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#84

Post by purplecats »

rehemiau wrote: post #82

I'm not American and I often see captchas that ask about "cars" or "trucks". And they use similar images. I sometimes don't pass through those. My question is, when I see a truck and I'm being asked to select all cars, should I select the truck or not? For me a truck is a car. Is it not one?

that's probably the type of stuff it wants to figure out by throwing it at us

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#85

Post by yorwba »

canofbars wrote: post #29
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a kind of "Western centric" view. In other parts of the world, a van/"minibus" is often used as a taxi.

I would have no problems identifying a minibus either. They typically have writing / phone number on the side and something on the roof. The google captcha is usually fairly permissive with mistakes and will show you a different question if you fail the first. I'd like to see someone actually show an example of a captcha they were incapable of solving.

> I would have no problems identifying a minibus either. They typically have writing / phone number on the side and something on the roof.

What if the writing accompanying the phone number says "Schlüsselservice Maier"? Some kind of ... shuttle service? Is that a taxi? (It's actually a locksmith.)

Of course these kinds of situations don't really happen for English speakers. I don't think I've ever seen non-English text in a CAPTCHA... Instead you get a picture of some Californian street with palm trees or something. (I assume those streets are in California. Maybe they're actually in Jakarta or elsewhere, in which case I'm sorry for being presumptive.)

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#86

Post by canofbars »

awalton wrote: post #73
nbevans wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Google CAPTCHA has been asking the same questions now pretty much since its inception. Are we really still training it? Or is it just running on auto-pilot at this point? I'm guessing it's likely the latter.

I'm old enough to remember when reCAPTCHA was first introduced to help with deciphering text from OCR'd books. At that time, it didn't feel so bad answering those, as we were using our intelligence to genuinely help preserve our cultural history. It then switched to being numbers on buildings and street signs, and it immediately felt worse - we were now doing a job for Google, and an annoying one. Mechanical Turk fro…

>we were now doing a job for Google

And in return you get an internet that is not filled with spam and bots. Or at least less filled with bots.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#87

Post by Dahoon »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #70
II2II wrote: post #56

Many of the criticism of the article focuses upon people being able to figure out Captcha's even if the aren't American, but there are a few things to consider: * A lot of native English speakers are going to have at least some exposure to American culture. For example: they may recognize that taxi's are yellow from American television and movies. Not everyone is going to have that exposure. * It assumes that there i…

This ignores an important point that this is a game of elimination and contrasts. For example in that taxi captcha, there are 4 pictures of trees and 5 pictures of vehicles. 1 vehicle is not identifiable, 1 is an utility van in the distance, and the remaining 3 are yellow cars. These yellow cars have phone numbers on the sides and signs on the roof (where visible). My bet is that the 3 yellow cars are taxis. (And as…

While you might guess that Yellow means Taxi in most of the world taxis aren't actually yellow. Around here they are mostly big dark Mercedes (many of them vans), maybe with some ads on them. And no big white sign on top either.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#88

Post by canofbars »

purplecats wrote: post #84
rehemiau wrote: post #82

I'm not American and I often see captchas that ask about "cars" or "trucks". And they use similar images. I sometimes don't pass through those. My question is, when I see a truck and I'm being asked to select all cars, should I select the truck or not? For me a truck is a car. Is it not one?

that's probably the type of stuff it wants to figure out by throwing it at us

Its probably a legit data point to see "Not all verified humans were able to agree on this image"

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#89

Post by lagadu »

canofbars wrote: post #15

Anyone with a half functioning brain can figure out which ones are the taxis. Taxis are not yellow in my country and I would have no issue picking those out. They have the very distinctive sign on the roof that no normal car has. Not even OP was confused by this, they are just complaining on the behalf of some theoretical person who might get confused.

> They have the very distinctive sign on the roof that no normal car has.

In your country maybe.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#90

Post by nottorp »

awalton wrote: post #73
nbevans wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Google CAPTCHA has been asking the same questions now pretty much since its inception. Are we really still training it? Or is it just running on auto-pilot at this point? I'm guessing it's likely the latter.

I'm old enough to remember when reCAPTCHA was first introduced to help with deciphering text from OCR'd books. At that time, it didn't feel so bad answering those, as we were using our intelligence to genuinely help preserve our cultural history. It then switched to being numbers on buildings and street signs, and it immediately felt worse - we were now doing a job for Google, and an annoying one. Mechanical Turk fro…

Every time I get a captcha with traffic lights I imagine a Google self driving car stopped at an intersection waiting for me to complete the captcha so it can figure out what it sees and move along :)
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