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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

#301

Post by azalemeth »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #275
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But you don't have to show humans the noise when you're getting humans to determine the ground truth, only the neural network. I think the noise exists to trip up CAPTCHA bots.

I think you're right -- if you browse from a "worse" IP, you get more grain added. I hate gCaptcha. HCaptcha is a little better but still bad...

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

#302

Post by southerntofu »

mlang23 wrote: post #280
random_upvoter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm member of a a religious (yogic) organisation and we have our own little chanting on Saturdays. When Covid broke out this obviously became impossible so we decided to have our meetings on Zoom instead. Now we have one woman in our group with some intellectual disability, a wonderful, sweet woman with the kindest heart in the world. Being 100% computer illiterate, she still decided to buy a tablet so she could f…

And there are many stories like this. When CAPTCHA started to be widespread, a lot of my blind friends (including me) suddenly were blocked from using parts of the Internet. We had to find sighted help to solve just a captcha, while everything else basically worked to be done independently. You can not imagine how much sorrow and self-pity CAPTCHAs have generated. I hope the person(s) who willingly allowed this trend…

I'm not a believer in godly stuff, but i'm sure Satan has dedicated an entire new level of hell to solving infinite CAPTCHAs loops for those who ever thought it would be a good idea to impose that on other people.

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

#303

Post by caslon »

mlang23 wrote: post #280
random_upvoter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm member of a a religious (yogic) organisation and we have our own little chanting on Saturdays. When Covid broke out this obviously became impossible so we decided to have our meetings on Zoom instead. Now we have one woman in our group with some intellectual disability, a wonderful, sweet woman with the kindest heart in the world. Being 100% computer illiterate, she still decided to buy a tablet so she could f…

And there are many stories like this. When CAPTCHA started to be widespread, a lot of my blind friends (including me) suddenly were blocked from using parts of the Internet. We had to find sighted help to solve just a captcha, while everything else basically worked to be done independently. You can not imagine how much sorrow and self-pity CAPTCHAs have generated. I hope the person(s) who willingly allowed this trend…

reCAPTCHA (Google's CAPTCHA) has been accessible to the blind for nearly the entirety of its existence if not the entirety outright.

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

#304

Post by southerntofu »

bamboozled wrote: post #249
random_upvoter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm member of a a religious (yogic) organisation and we have our own little chanting on Saturdays. When Covid broke out this obviously became impossible so we decided to have our meetings on Zoom instead. Now we have one woman in our group with some intellectual disability, a wonderful, sweet woman with the kindest heart in the world. Being 100% computer illiterate, she still decided to buy a tablet so she could f…

I could not reasonably answer that question but I came close to saying "dear Kristine, throw this tablet in the garbage, none of this is going to make you happier" This is a great and wise insight !

Unfortunately, yes it is. It's a sad state of the computer industry that these technological marvels that once filled everyone with admiration and joy has been reduced to that.

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

#305

Post by sdoering »

honzzz wrote: post #246
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.

>> the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human Indignity, that's it! I was never able to explain to myself the visceral hate I feel when I encounter captcha. I knew it could not be explained by the little work it requires, I knew there had to be more, I just couldn't put my finger on it. Indignity, and maybe the feeling of being used. I have to admit, When I encounter captcha, I leave that page and never come ba…

On site I find especially annoying is Humble Bundle.

Before I want to buy something there login. To prove that it is me owning the account I receive an email with a code I have to type in. Especially when I am on a mobile phone.

After that, when frigging ever I want to checkoutmy cartI am forcedto do these captcha again prove that I am a human.

I just stopped buying from them. Even if I like the cause.

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

#306

Post by southerntofu »

caslon wrote: post #303
mlang23 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there are many stories like this. When CAPTCHA started to be widespread, a lot of my blind friends (including me) suddenly were blocked from using parts of the Internet. We had to find sighted help to solve just a captcha, while everything else basically worked to be done independently. You can not imagine how much sorrow and self-pity CAPTCHAs have generated. I hope the person(s) who willingly allowed this trend…

reCAPTCHA (Google's CAPTCHA) has been accessible to the blind for nearly the entirety of its existence if not the entirety outright.

Yeah, if your browser supports this and that, otherwise not. No audio? Bad luck. No JS? Bad luck.

Also, i'm assuming, maybe wrongfully so, that Google would make accessible CAPTCHAs harder to pass, with the logic that sound-based CAPTCHAs are much easier to break for a bot.

All in all, reCAPTCHA (and other modern CAPTCHAs like hCaptcha) are a usability/accessibility disaster. It should be a crime to enable that on a service to restrict access to your peers.

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

#307

Post by southerntofu »

Freak_NL wrote: post #279
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After years and years of captchas I still have no idea if I’m supposed to select all the poles for the traffic lights as well.

Should I click every tile that has a little bit of traffic light in it? Even with just the lamp housing that often means nearly all tiles. Somehow it doesn't seem to matter; it just works. Or not, and then I have no idea why. Captcha bonus level: try solving one of these from a public VPN.

Yeah, it's extra frustrating that you never know when clicking a tile that contains just a tiny bit of traffic light, whether the algorithm on the other side will see it too.

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

#308

Post by southerntofu »

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.

> the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human

Well put. I would add that it's even more humiliating that you have to "prove" it to a machine, who has no clue what it even means to be human.

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

#309

Post by mongol »

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #244
random_upvoter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm member of a a religious (yogic) organisation and we have our own little chanting on Saturdays. When Covid broke out this obviously became impossible so we decided to have our meetings on Zoom instead. Now we have one woman in our group with some intellectual disability, a wonderful, sweet woman with the kindest heart in the world. Being 100% computer illiterate, she still decided to buy a tablet so she could f…

After years and years of captchas I still have no idea if I’m supposed to select all the poles for the traffic lights as well.

I have had the same doubt. But just now I realized, that if this this is for training som self-driving AI, it is probably only the actual lights that matter. I.e the red, yellow or green signal. The rest is noise.

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

#310

Post by caslon »

southerntofu wrote: post #306
caslon wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reCAPTCHA (Google's CAPTCHA) has been accessible to the blind for nearly the entirety of its existence if not the entirety outright.

Yeah, if your browser supports this and that, otherwise not. No audio? Bad luck. No JS? Bad luck. Also, i'm assuming, maybe wrongfully so, that Google would make accessible CAPTCHAs harder to pass, with the logic that sound-based CAPTCHAs are much easier to break for a bot. All in all, reCAPTCHA (and other modern CAPTCHAs like hCaptcha) are a usability/accessibility disaster. It should be a crime to enable that on a…

Browsers have been free for longer than reCAPTCHA has existed, and browsers with audio and JS have been free for longer, too. I don't like JavaScript, and I block reCAPTCHA, but it's ludicrous to pretend that Google hasn't made it as accessible as possible. There are a lot of things wrong with Google, but accessibility is one thing they're reasonably good at, and making up things to trash reCAPTCHA seems dishonest.

Audio reCAPTCHA is super easy. Significantly easier than the visual one.

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