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Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com

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Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#51

Post by LanceH »

wpietri wrote: post #40
LanceH wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably humans would see some pattern that isn't there. So you have to get the correct wrong result.

Ooh, that's interesting. I was just talking with somebody yesterday about how his bosses had him spend six months trying to make a new financial system bug-compatible with an old financial system, one to which they had lost the source code. They eventually gave up and just kept using the old system so they could be consistent with previous publications. Making something bug-compatible with the human vision system mig…

My statement was mostly tongue in cheek. On the other hand, "what does that cloud look like?" would be an interesting captcha.

Oh, and I might be better at the imagination ones than the current crop, especially on my phone.

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#52

Post by Geee »

return0 wrote: post #42
Keyframe wrote: post #29

Now that programs are better and better at solving CAPTCHA - that means that correct CAPTCHA input will mean the opposite from what it means now. Since programs are better at solving CAPTCAH than humans, correct input (3/3 for example) will mean it's a robot. Thus, CAPTCHA becomes relevant again.

The endgame solution is to let humans judge other humans. In 5 years, you will be interrogated every time you post to HN. The machines are here to make our lives hell...

The question is: does it matter whether the participants are human if they are intelligent enough to contribute. I think we'll eventually end up in situation where captchas actually filter out humans :)

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#53

Post by ashmud »

id wrote: post #15
josho wrote: post #10

Interestingly I activated a new gmail account today and during the signup process I experienced the obligatory captcha. It was in two parts, the first looked strikingly like a street view picture of a house number, while the second looked like a traditional captcha. I suspect that google has been using techniques like this to validate their computer vision conclusions. Which makes their 99% assertion even more intere…

It has been like this for a while now. AFAIK you have either - the actual captcha and a word from a book (Google Books) - the actual captcha and a house number from Street View (Google Maps) Only the actual captcha has to be typed in correctly.

Do people ever intentionally type in nonsense for the non-captcha part, out of spite, for instance? If you could persuade enough people to provide non-answers for the non-captcha part, would Google stop using it (the non-captcha part)? My guess is it's like spam. As long as it works a small fraction of the time, it will still exist.

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#54

Post by Keyframe »

return0 wrote: post #42
Keyframe wrote: post #29

Now that programs are better and better at solving CAPTCHA - that means that correct CAPTCHA input will mean the opposite from what it means now. Since programs are better at solving CAPTCAH than humans, correct input (3/3 for example) will mean it's a robot. Thus, CAPTCHA becomes relevant again.

The endgame solution is to let humans judge other humans. In 5 years, you will be interrogated every time you post to HN. The machines are here to make our lives hell...

In 5 years, you will be interrogated every time you post to HN

But that's how it already is! :) Eventually spam content will either blend in to be relevant and attractive (we can see hints of it in new youtube ads system, but that's matching to ads only, not generating) or it will be analyzed and scrapped (along with other comments) by other equally intelligent systems. So machines will judge both machines and humans equally I think.

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#55

Post by kevinchen »

zwegner wrote: post #45

This particular issue (AI performance on captchas) is really quite fascinating. It's an arms race, but the problem is, only one side can win. Google is claiming they have improved their system in some (understandably) unspecified way, but there's only so far this can go. Captchas need to detect whether someone is human, but it has to work for everyone, ideally, even those with disabilities. Any simple task a human ca…

> The street address/book scan approach that Google uses is interesting in that the exact solution is not known, so they presumably have to be somewhat forgiving in accepting answers

reCAPTCHA presents a known problem and an unknown problem to the user. If the user answers the known one correctly, it assumes that the answer to the unknown problem is correct too. I believe the text-based reCAPTCHAs will accept an answer within a character or two as correct.

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#56

Post by nileshtrivedi »

zwegner wrote: post #45

This particular issue (AI performance on captchas) is really quite fascinating. It's an arms race, but the problem is, only one side can win. Google is claiming they have improved their system in some (understandably) unspecified way, but there's only so far this can go. Captchas need to detect whether someone is human, but it has to work for everyone, ideally, even those with disabilities. Any simple task a human ca…

Humans have had an easy time for a while. Good to finally see some competition. :)

On the other hand, why is that we insist on humanity? None of the systems can block a captcha-solving team based in Nigeria. What we need to block is bad behavior by users and not their humanity.

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#57

Post by [deleted] »

ashmud wrote: post #53
id wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been like this for a while now. AFAIK you have either - the actual captcha and a word from a book (Google Books) - the actual captcha and a house number from Street View (Google Maps) Only the actual captcha has to be typed in correctly.

Do people ever intentionally type in nonsense for the non-captcha part, out of spite, for instance? If you could persuade enough people to provide non-answers for the non-captcha part, would Google stop using it (the non-captcha part)? My guess is it's like spam. As long as it works a small fraction of the time, it will still exist.

[deleted]

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#58

Post by zwegner »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #56
zwegner wrote: post #45

This particular issue (AI performance on captchas) is really quite fascinating. It's an arms race, but the problem is, only one side can win. Google is claiming they have improved their system in some (understandably) unspecified way, but there's only so far this can go. Captchas need to detect whether someone is human, but it has to work for everyone, ideally, even those with disabilities. Any simple task a human ca…

Humans have had an easy time for a while. Good to finally see some competition. :) On the other hand, why is that we insist on humanity? None of the systems can block a captcha-solving team based in Nigeria. What we need to block is bad behavior by users and not their humanity.

Good point. I imagine that detecting such behavior will also be pretty difficult. It's one thing in a forum, where you'd maybe want to discriminate against idiots (but that would still leave you open to the problem of shills/sock puppets). But for big companies like Google, would they really want to open that can of worms?

Of course, there's a quite relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/810/

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#59

Post by return0 »

dmbass wrote: post #48
return0 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The endgame solution is to let humans judge other humans. In 5 years, you will be interrogated every time you post to HN. The machines are here to make our lives hell...

That's not the endgame. Once machines pass the Turing test, it will be impossible to filter humans vs. machines.

What if you are interrogated offline? What if the police visits you every 3 months to make sure you haven't turned to a robot?

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#60

Post by Lambdanaut »

zwegner wrote: post #45

This particular issue (AI performance on captchas) is really quite fascinating. It's an arms race, but the problem is, only one side can win. Google is claiming they have improved their system in some (understandably) unspecified way, but there's only so far this can go. Captchas need to detect whether someone is human, but it has to work for everyone, ideally, even those with disabilities. Any simple task a human ca…

The suggestion to "go to a physical location to get a trusted government signature" has deeper flaws as well.

What's to stop a bot writer from getting a signature and plugging it into his bot?

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