Captcha Crackers
By Peter LloydHere’s one mighty stretch of an acronym—CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing (tests to tell) Computers and Humans Apart.” Some judicious editing saved us from CAPTTTCAHA.
The Turing Test referred to here calls up Alan Turing’s devilish definition that if a computer can convince a human that it’s human, well, it’s human. That’s no more complicated than “If it walks like a duck…” but a whole heck of a lot more controversial.
So along comes a group that claims, Computer cracks CAPTCHAs in step toward artificial intelligence.
You may have come across CAPTCHA after signing up for something or other on the Internet. It gives you a discombobulated image of characters—numbers and letters—and challenges you to decipher them. Yes, to prove that you are human and not an application driven by an algorithm disguised as a human.
Two things we need not worry about. First, the group is not out to destroy the Internet posing as humans. That would be silly. It’s incredibly inexpensive to hire people in low-wage locations to bust CAPTCHAs manually. Despite the fact that the algorithm claims near 100 percent accuracy.
The intent is to advance artificial intelligence by improving character recognition in sight-impaired humans as well as robots and medical devices.
The second thing not to worry about out is that machines will someday perform creative acts. Although some computer output can already appear creative, real creativity arises from the need to avoid pain and increase pleasure. Two things I don’t think computing machines will ever accomplish.
Peter Lloyd spent two years studying to be a Franciscan priest, drove taxicabs and school buses, ran a picture framing gallery, worked on a farm, was a warehouseman, a US Census enumerator, and even took a few odd jobs.
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