Talk:1897: Self Driving

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 12:11, 2 October 2017 by 162.158.134.100 (talk)
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I think this is more a reference to various projects (like the ReCAPTCHA that protects this site) that use CAPTCHAs to digitise text and so on, by involuntarily crowdsourcing the typing out of the text by users trying to complete a login, rather than specifically about bots trying to circumvent anti-bot protection. It also brings to mind things like the Zooniverse projects, where volunteers contribute to the classification of astronomical bodies, identification of animals in game reserves, and so on.162.158.155.32 10:33, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

The comic clearly references techniques like reCAPTCHA that trick (1) unsuspecting people into doing the real work for free while they think they are solving a captcha, and (2) users of the final product who think it was created by an AI (or at least an OCR) when it was done "by hand". The comic is neither about teaching AIs, nor voluntary collaborative projects. Zetfr 11:42, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

I think the comic is about the borderlands between knowingly volunteering your time and unknowlingly supplying an AI with valuable information. When reading the caption my first thought was Google Translate, where the gamification / voluntary work is based on the texts submitted by a lot of unsuspecting users. When voluntarily contributing to the AI, I've been presented with some poor bloke's chat log, and another person's travel plans. 162.158.134.100 12:11, 2 October 2017 (UTC)