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reCAPTCHA

image version fed self-driving training data

5 transcript mentions
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’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’265
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In the moments

2 linked receipts
Fact

The original CAPTCHA secretly transcribed millions of scanned books

Those squiggly-letter CAPTCHAs did double duty: while verifying you weren't a bot, you were transcribing words from book-scan pages that computers couldn't read — work that ended up digitizing millions of books. reCAPTCHA's image version later did the same for self-driving-car training data.

“So they basically outsourced the work and solved two problems with one stone. On the website side, they just want to make sure you're not a bot who's signing up for their service, like a scammer who's going to spam everybody. But then they did good in the world also because that project ended up transcribing like millions and millions of books.”
EP 162 · 26:32 · SHAAN
Read at 26:32
mfmindex.com№ 0162-1592
Billy

Luis von Ahn: invented reCAPTCHA, then founded Duolingo on the same trick

Sam and Shaan marvel that Luis von Ahn invented CAPTCHA/reCAPTCHA — monetizing human verification as free labor — and then built Duolingo on the same idea, where learners translate paid third-party content while studying. 'This guy's a genius.'

“He did both. And that guy started Duolingo.”
EP 162 · 27:43 · BOTH
Read at 27:43
mfmindex.com№ 0162-1663