Researchers from the Human Computation Institute (HCI) and Cornell University have conducted a study that claims that the combination of human and computer intelligence is necessary to solve the most complex problems of the world, including climate change and geopolitical issues. The team says that although humans surpass machines at many things such as creative abstraction, combining these strengths with those of computers will allow us to create collaborative networks that achieve things that traditional problem solving cannot.
New technologies in human computation provide real-time access to crowd-based inputs, meaning each individual's contribution to the system can be processed by a computer and transferred to the next person who can then analyze and improve it, allowing the construction of flexible, collaborative environments more conducive to tackling the most challenging issues of the world.
YardMap is an example of something similar to this idea that is already occurring, which was launched by Cornell in 2012 in order to map global conservation efforts more effectively.
"By sharing and observing practices in a map-based social network, people can begin to relate their individual efforts to the global conservation potential of living and working landscapes," Janis Dickinson, who participated in the research, said in a press release.
Furthermore, HCI is also using crowd power to stimulate Alzheimer's research that is taking place at Cornell by combining two microtasking systems into a simple online game, which can be seen at WeCureAlz.com.
"By enabling members of the general public to play some simple online game, we expect to reduce the time to treatment discovery from decades to just a few years", said Pietro Michelucci, who is heading the research. "This gives an opportunity for anyone, including the tech-savvy generation of caregivers and early stage AD patients, to take the matter into their own hands."
The findings will be published in the Jan. 1 issue of Science.
