Luis von Ahn is my new hero

Not only does this guy’s last name contain two words that also rhyme (von Ahn), he is undoubtedly the king of ultra-philanthropic-super-geekiness.

Luis von Ahn is an assistant computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Together with a team from Carnegie Mellon University, Luis is largely responsible for CAPTCHA¹ programs as we know them today.

A CAPTCHA or Captcha (pronounced /ˈkæptʃə/) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process usually involves one computer (a server) asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human.
—Wikipedia

Not content to simply help rid spam from the face of the earth, Luis believed that CAPTCHA technology could be used for a greater purpose. He decided to use CAPTCHA—a relatively large waste of human energy and time²—and apply it to a problem of global proportions: digitizing the world’s vast library of books, newspapers and old time radio shows.

Enter reCAPTCHA
The very thing that makes CAPTCHA so effective—the computer’s inability to read warped characters on distorted backgrounds—is the precise challenge faced by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) programs while digitizing books.The idea was to put two challenge words side-by-side. One is computer generated with a known solution (like the original CAPTCHA) and the other is a scanned word which the computer’s OCR software was unable to read. If the user enters in the correct answer for the first word then it is assumed that the user correctly answered the second word. The solved word is then sent back to computer to help complete the digitization of the world’s books.

Isn’t that cool?

Philanthropy
By the way, Luis von Ahn isn’t in it for the money. He receives no compensation for reCAPTCHA and it is absolutely free to use. After earning his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005, Luis got several job offers by some of the world’s largest and most profitable companies in the tech industry—including a personal visit from Bill Gates. Luis turned them all down in order to teach and continue his ultra-philanthropic-super-geekiness at Carnegie Mellon University.

What’s next?
Launched in May 2008, Luis’ latest project is called Gwap or “Games With A Purpose”.

“When you play a game at Gwap, you aren’t just having fun. You’re helping the world become a better place. By playing our games, you’re training computers to solve problems for humans all over the world.”
—Gwap website

In one game, ESP, two players are shown the same image and are asked to type in a tag for it. When you agree on a tag you both move forward and are awarded some points. The tags are recorded with the associated image and the data is forwarded to search engines. This makes looking for images on search engines easier.

1. CAPTCHA is also an acronym. “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”
2. About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans daily. Each taking roughly ten seconds of human time to solve. That aggregates to more than 150,000 hours per day.