AI Plans an Expert Takeover: But First, It Politefully Requests Their Assistance

“AI Is Coming for the Experts. First, It Needs Their Help”

“Walk the aisles of any supermarket, and you’ll see them: people with phones out, snapping pic after pic of barcodes. Entering data. Training AI. They’re using an app called RemoTasks, which pays you to help build the machine-learning services that power self-driving cars, parcel-sorting robots, and voice assistants.”

Ah, the supermarket. A place once solely for snagging groceries, is now a vivid example of how training AI has become just another item on our to-do list. Trending among these grocery amateurs is an application named RemoTasks, allowing us to donate our time in the noble pursuit of ironing out the wrinkles and hiccups in AI and automation.

This seemingly innocuous and somewhat lucrative app plays an integral part in training artificial intelligence to recognise objects, read receipts, or comprehend signs. Essentially upheaving its clueless natural disposition with a graduation cap of enhanced understanding because we all know nothing screams superiority like getting a machine to identify a chayote squash.

How does it work? Users take pictures of random objects or barcodes, label them according to RemoTasks’ guidelines and points, and voila, they are contributors in the grand world of AI development. The lightning speed with which technology is evolving is awe-inspiringly terrifying.

Imagine teaching a robot to distinguish a ‘stop’ sign from a ‘no entry’ sign. It’s not like training your mundane, paw-shaking dog. This is science, this is future! Certainly, the mundane paw-shaking dog won’t give you points to trade in for internet services, clothing, or even luxury items, now would it?

Although this system may feel like one is caged within the realms of AI’s unending learning curve, users are voluntarily signing up for this. More than 100,000 users around the globe are investing their time, ensuring that RemoTasks is ticking all the correct boxes and giving us the AI experiences we deserve. They’re literally turning our Instagrammable lives into intelligent machines’ learning material!

That’s how we’re training tomorrow’s AI – not in a glamorous lab sporting lab coats with high-tech machines but in our everyday environments, clicking photos of bananas and soda cans. What a fascinating way to contribute to shaping the unimaginable futures of AI technology, while turning a few heads in the grocery store.

Read the original article here: https://www.wired.com/story/remotasks-ai-expert-data-labor/