Millions of crowdworkers are helping the digital world run smoothly by solving the problems that computers can’t solve just yet. Among many other tasks they categorize images, transcribe texts and filter out explicit content. Ironically, by doing so they also train the algorithms which will replace them eventually.
How would everyday life be affected if this digital piecework was woven into it? The Bachelor thesis project Human Element Inc. explores this question through three speculative crowdwork services.
Read more about the project here: http://philippschmitt.com/projects/human-element
Crowdworking, where small tasks that computers can't handle are outsourced to human workers online, is one way to teach algorithms how to recognize faces, places, and context. And with machine learning on the rise, crowdwork is only going to become more common. So is it the bellwether of a dystopian future, or the democratization of labor?