Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does • Hacker News Board

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#51

Post by dylan604 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

Zababa wrote: post #17

mediocregopher wrote: post #7

For me a part of the melancholy feeling comes from the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human, and then the frustration at this stupid world we've created which requires me to do so which immediately follows the indignity. A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.

Being asked by a machine to prove that you are human is sometimes really humiliating, especially if you fail the captcha a few times in a row.

My favorite is finding errors on their side. I was tasked with finding the parking meters, and being told I was missing one. The "one" was an image of a mailbox, not a parking meter. Selecting the mailbox allowed it to say I was a human

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#52

Post by dunnevens » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

Zababa wrote: post #17

mediocregopher wrote: post #7

For me a part of the melancholy feeling comes from the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human, and then the frustration at this stupid world we've created which requires me to do so which immediately follows the indignity. A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.

Being asked by a machine to prove that you are human is sometimes really humiliating, especially if you fail the captcha a few times in a row.

Sometimes I end up failing them deliberately. I can't boycott them because they're often in the way of important sites. So my small, practically invisible protest is to never click more than 3 times. If you want me to pick out all the bicycles, you better have 3 or less. I'm only clicking 3.

I fully understand this isn't going to have any effect. Maybe if a million of us were doing it, it would. But it still makes me feel better.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#53

Post by pyuser583 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

I’ve always wanted to do humorous/depressing captchas.

“Select all the images of public executions.”

“Select all the images of disgraced politicians.”

“Select all the images convicted war criminals.”

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#54

Post by ljm » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

> Looking at these leaden vistas of America

This touches on something else: are all the Google captchas, worldwide, based on photos taken within the US? I suspect they are, and cultural imperialism is at play: taxis in New York are yellow, therefore a yellow car must be a taxi. That kind of thing.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#55

Post by OJFord » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

rickboyce wrote: post #3

For me this effect is significantly compounded by not being from the US / North America. This has come up on HN before (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25226805 ) but it still strikes me as so odd that you need quite a bit of USA cultural / vernacular knowledge to navigate the internet anywhere in the world (or at least English speaking sites?). What a strange view into another country to see each day!

I was going to vehemently agree and start ranting, but I see you've linked a submission that already has enough of me ranting! Ha. I'll only add that sometimes it annoys me so much I want to create my own 'Britcha' out of spite.

Perhaps if I ever run some really popular site I shall: 'select all pubs', 'arrange the squares in order of social class', 'type the word that describes an ordered collection of people waiting for something'.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#56

Post by TechBro8615 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

dunnevens wrote: post #52

Zababa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being asked by a machine to prove that you are human is sometimes really humiliating, especially if you fail the captcha a few times in a row.

Sometimes I end up failing them deliberately. I can't boycott them because they're often in the way of important sites. So my small, practically invisible protest is to never click more than 3 times. If you want me to pick out all the bicycles, you better have 3 or less. I'm only clicking 3. I fully understand this isn't going to have any effect. Maybe if a million of us were doing it, it would. But it still makes me…

True civil disobedience would be clicking the non-bikes.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#57

Post by vmception » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #48

Zababa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being asked by a machine to prove that you are human is sometimes really humiliating, especially if you fail the captcha a few times in a row.

It's really hard to know sometimes which frames humans generally classify as 'bicycle' or 'traffic light'. The bottom third of a tire? The supporting pole of an extra set of signals in the background? I sometimes have no idea whose intelligence I'm supposed to emulate.

I’ve heard that before and I don’t really understand how people have so much trouble with this. But I guess knowing the rules helps me with this:

The machine doesn't know the answer so it doesn't really matter. You need to emulate the crowd and also realize you are contributing to the crowd. So you can actually pollute it with wrong answers to delay the robot uprising. Or at least cripple it when they keep running into fire hydrants they didn't see.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#58

Post by dylan604 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

mediocregopher wrote: post #7

For me a part of the melancholy feeling comes from the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human, and then the frustration at this stupid world we've created which requires me to do so which immediately follows the indignity. A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.

I hate captchas with a passion, yet I was recently forced to deploy it on website due to direct instructions from the credit card processor. The system was being used to roll through credit cards script-o-matically, and they mandated captchas to be deployed on threat of closing our account if not.

So if anyone has better solution so I can eliminate the G and is Wordpress happy, I'm all ears (or eyes reading in this case).

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#59

Post by mixedCase » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

I've read the whole article, and I see so many comments agreeing or even adding detail to the post. Am I really in the minority if this kind of thing couldn't even cross my mind or feels like written by someone living in a parallel universe?

A few poorly shot street photos are "unbearably depressing"? And there's even a detailed explanation breaking it down into points, each one feeling more alien than the last. They're just pictures from the street! Just how? How does a person come up with a whole emotional essay for this?

I am failing to understand the author to the degree I feel like there's something wrong with this person's psyche or something is wrong with mine. Am I having a stroke and words are no longer making sense? Am I too young, or am I too old at 26 to "get it"? Is it because I live in a third world country and lack perspective or have "too much" of it? Is this homework for an English class and it's just trying to talk about literally anything for a given arbitrary word count? I almost feel like I'm dissociating from reality by an article talking about a freaking captcha.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#60

Post by kenny11 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #51

Zababa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being asked by a machine to prove that you are human is sometimes really humiliating, especially if you fail the captcha a few times in a row.

My favorite is finding errors on their side. I was tasked with finding the parking meters, and being told I was missing one. The "one" was an image of a mailbox, not a parking meter. Selecting the mailbox allowed it to say I was a human

I think I got that exact same one, and had the exact same problem with it. Maybe reasoning that it was confusing the mailbox for a parking meter was how I proved that I was a human to it.