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

clivethompson.medium.com

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

#121

Post by 8note »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #37
jszymborski wrote: post #4

> Google’s CAPTCHA images are frequently grainy and badly focused. This is likely because, as Vox points out, Google has gone through most of the easy visual-recognition training cases, where the pictures were clear and sharp. Now they’re stuck with the hard stuff, which tend to be pictures of terrible quality. While this is true, I think some of the artifacts in the accompanying example are added by Google as a sort…

It’s not just that — google wants its own models to be resilient in the face of noisy data. (You’ve probably see examples where a cat is classified as a mountain or something ridiculous due to the addition of precisely crafted noise.) The best way to achieve that resilience is to simply train the models with noisy data; part of the learning process will then be learning to ignore the noise.

You might also be able to get away with cheaper cameras

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

#122

Post by guerrilla »

crazygringo wrote: post #117
guerrilla wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was exactly the same way when I was younger. > my emotional awareness was... exceedingly underdeveloped. Are you implying the GP's emotional awareness is "exceedingly underdeveloped" and that they'll grow out of it? > you just haven't had the practice/opportunity to develop this side of things > there absolutely is a reality that you haven't developed skills to see Yes, it does seem like that's what you're saying…

Sorry, that's not what I meant but I can see how it could be interpreted that way. So let me rephrase. I intended the word "underdeveloped" not as a value judgment, just a practical sense -- in the same way my own baseball skills are underdeveloped i.e. nonexistent. If you replace it with "less developed" that might be clearer. I meant it just in the context of the goal of someone trying to understand and relate to t…

> I intended the word "underdeveloped" not as a value judgment, just a practical sense -- in the same way my own baseball skills are underdeveloped i.e. nonexistent. If you replace it with "less developed" that might be clearer. I meant it just in the context of the goal of someone trying to understand and relate to the article.

> My main point being that it's not something you're born with or not, but that you can choose to develop. That the potential is there. But you're under no obligation to, it absolutely is a choice/preference.

Yeah sorry, no, that doesn't fly. Just because someone doesn't feel the same way you do about something does not mean they are lacking some skill or another. Your response is just more dismissive condescension. Maybe keep working on that development of yours.

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

#123

Post by dunnevens »

mrkramer wrote: post #66
dunnevens wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you want us to DDoS the captcha networks? Hmm is that even legal? But it would be somewhat cool if millions of people starting failing captcha on purpose it would be something like decentralized volunteer mass ddos attack.

Wouldn't be a DDoS. At least, I don't think it would.

It would just be simply people refusing to work on captchas more than a certain amount. Basically, if you make me hunt for bikes and there's more than 3 of them, then I'm not doing it. More akin to a deliberate labor slowdown than a DDoS, or even a strike.

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

#124

Post by JoeyJoJoJr »

crazygringo wrote: post #117
guerrilla wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was exactly the same way when I was younger. > my emotional awareness was... exceedingly underdeveloped. Are you implying the GP's emotional awareness is "exceedingly underdeveloped" and that they'll grow out of it? > you just haven't had the practice/opportunity to develop this side of things > there absolutely is a reality that you haven't developed skills to see Yes, it does seem like that's what you're saying…

Sorry, that's not what I meant but I can see how it could be interpreted that way. So let me rephrase. I intended the word "underdeveloped" not as a value judgment, just a practical sense -- in the same way my own baseball skills are underdeveloped i.e. nonexistent. If you replace it with "less developed" that might be clearer. I meant it just in the context of the goal of someone trying to understand and relate to t…

I understood what you were saying and didn’t interpret it as condescending.

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

#125

Post by mkl »

pkulak wrote: post #36

I'd say it's because the North America, car-dominated, strip-mall-and-stroad landscape is depressing as hell. Open a map and drop yourself somewhere in Europe. I just did, and I feel like identifying crosswalks in a photo like this wouldn't be depressing at all: https://i.imgur.com/31AgNvs.png

I didn't understand "stroad" so I looked it up:

> "Stroad" is a word we coined in 2013 to explain those dangerous, multi-laned thoroughfares you encounter in nearly every city, town, and suburb in America. They're what happens when a street (a place where people interact with businesses and residences, and where wealth is produced) gets combined with a road (a high-speed route between productive places). -- https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-...

That's pretty confusing, since in NZ the words "street" and "road" have identical meaning and are totally interchangeable. Is this distinction real in the US, or another thing Strong Towns have invented?

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

#126

Post by zarzavat »

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

The reason this happens is that captchas are not localized. Most countries don't have mail boxes, only US, Canada, Australia, NZ have them so people from outside those countries may not think to distinguish mailboxes from parking meters and will just click every square that matches their mental model of a parking meter (a pole with something on top or a big box)

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

#127

Post by judge2020 »

andrepd wrote: post #64
dylan604 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

There are captcha providers besides google, such as hcaptcha, or even rolling your own solution (a la old vbulletin forums)

The issue with this is that you won’t have a scapegoat if people do continue to roll through credit cards. With ReCaptcha, you just say “all of these attempts had verified captchas” and the CC processor is unlikely to personally blame you/the company for the activity since ReCaptcha is widespread. With a custom solution or other captchas, they can just block you due to insufficient protections when they see you have higher fraud rates than merchants utilizing ReCaptcha.

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

#128

Post by judge2020 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #46
jdavis703 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do delay customers by 20 seconds, because if we’re carrying metal then we’ve got to be inspected by security.

Capchas hold you up 20 seconds every single time, whereas metal detectors usually don't alarm at all.

Wasted time is still >20 seconds every time you encounter a metal detector, unless you really don’t ever carry or wear metal. Bonus points if you regrettably have a bag that needs to be searched.

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

#129

Post by walrus01 »

If you want to see a lot of captchas, try browsing with Firefox mobile with ublock origin installed. It's sad how many people design for 100% chrome. To the point that being a stock Firefox user agent that doesn't receive all ads shows up as if you're a bot scraping the site.

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

#130

Post by Zababa »

zarzavat wrote: post #126
dylan604 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The reason this happens is that captchas are not localized. Most countries don't have mail boxes, only US, Canada, Australia, NZ have them so people from outside those countries may not think to distinguish mailboxes from parking meters and will just click every square that matches their mental model of a parking meter (a pole with something on top or a big box)

> Most countries don't have mail boxes (only US, Canada, Australia, NZ)

They do, they just look different. At least that's how it is in France.

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