Comments on: Non-digitizable things http://myownpirateradio.com/2005/12/01/non-digitizable-things/ Oshoma Momoh's personal blog Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:00:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU hourly 1 By: My Own Pirate Radio » What Can People Do That Computers Can’t? http://myownpirateradio.com/2005/12/01/non-digitizable-things/#comment-30 My Own Pirate Radio » What Can People Do That Computers Can’t? Tue, 09 May 2006 14:18:25 +0000 http://myownpirateradio.com/2005/12/01/non-digitizable-things/#comment-30 [...] Amazon launched Mechanical Turk late in 2005. It really got me thinking about what types of tasks are undigitizable, the interplay between collective intelligence and outsourcing, and related ethics and economics issues including worker conditions and incentives. It’s interesting to see concrete examples of people working in this area and exploring all these issues in great depth. For example, here is how Benjamin Hill approaches the space: BH: …We’ve started to think of the whole knowledge workspace as divided on one axis along people’s opinions all the way to things that are absolute. Like people’s opinions would be “tag the image”, absolute would be “OCR check this one line of text”. There’s one correct answer versus “it really matters what people thing” and then along another axis we’ve got everything from easy where it just takes a few seconds of time, all the way up to very difficult where it takes a longer amount of time. If you can imagine both Mycroft and CastingWords occupying different bubbled areas of that knowledge workspace, so actually we’re going after different targets and I think both have a lot of value at that point. [...] [...] Amazon launched Mechanical Turk late in 2005. It really got me thinking about what types of tasks are undigitizable, the interplay between collective intelligence and outsourcing, and related ethics and economics issues including worker conditions and incentives. It’s interesting to see concrete examples of people working in this area and exploring all these issues in great depth. For example, here is how Benjamin Hill approaches the space: BH: …We’ve started to think of the whole knowledge workspace as divided on one axis along people’s opinions all the way to things that are absolute. Like people’s opinions would be “tag the image”, absolute would be “OCR check this one line of text”. There’s one correct answer versus “it really matters what people thing” and then along another axis we’ve got everything from easy where it just takes a few seconds of time, all the way up to very difficult where it takes a longer amount of time. If you can imagine both Mycroft and CastingWords occupying different bubbled areas of that knowledge workspace, so actually we’re going after different targets and I think both have a lot of value at that point. [...]

]]> By: Oshoma Momoh http://myownpirateradio.com/2005/12/01/non-digitizable-things/#comment-29 Oshoma Momoh Mon, 05 Dec 2005 16:09:44 +0000 http://myownpirateradio.com/2005/12/01/non-digitizable-things/#comment-29 I suspect they would perceive something beautiful in Beethoven... there's a nature vs. nurture argument in there. And I agree, consciousness is a precondition for most of the things on the list, aside from sensation. (You ought to be able to sense things digitally, you just won't appreciate or understand them the same way a human does.) But I wonder if you can get snippets of creativity, say, without "full" consciousness. I guess we'll have to wait and see. I suspect they would perceive something beautiful in Beethoven… there’s a nature vs. nurture argument in there. And I agree, consciousness is a precondition for most of the things on the list, aside from sensation. (You ought to be able to sense things digitally, you just won’t appreciate or understand them the same way a human does.) But I wonder if you can get snippets of creativity, say, without “full” consciousness. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

]]> By: SeanO http://myownpirateradio.com/2005/12/01/non-digitizable-things/#comment-28 SeanO Fri, 02 Dec 2005 02:08:48 +0000 http://myownpirateradio.com/2005/12/01/non-digitizable-things/#comment-28 Hey Oshoma, I think you're right, in that "consciousness" might be the heading for the 5 items above it. If consciousness can be sparked in machines, I think these other things on your list may just start to emerge. They seem to be so strongly connected to all of our past experiences, which are typically processed by our "consciousness". I wonder how a person would react, not ever having listened to a scrap of music, when played an exerpt from Beethoven's 5th. Would it sound like noise, or could they somehow appreciate it? Very interesting stuff. (I've dogeared the Wikipedia article.) Hey Oshoma,

I think you’re right, in that “consciousness” might be the heading for the 5 items above it. If consciousness can be sparked in machines, I think these other things on your list may just start to emerge. They seem to be so strongly connected to all of our past experiences, which are typically processed by our “consciousness”. I wonder how a person would react, not ever having listened to a scrap of music, when played an exerpt from Beethoven’s 5th. Would it sound like noise, or could they somehow appreciate it? Very interesting stuff. (I’ve dogeared the Wikipedia article.)

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