And how does this CAPTCHA make you feel?
A crazy story about a bot hiring a TaskRabbit to identify CAPTCHA images - and more thoughts on how we're doomed.
Let’s jump right in.
You know the simple tests that pop up when you’re trying to create an account on a website or make a purchase to prove you’re not a bot?
With questions like “identify the crosswalks” in the pictures and then you’re like “duh, so easy” - and then you continue on with your life?
These tests are called CAPTCHAs (aka Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart, a term coined in 2000 at Carnegie Mellon University).
According to CAPTCHA’s website, it’s “a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot”….. yet
Well, I’ve noticed the tests continue to get more complicated with time.. as the bots get smarter perhaps?
Here’s a CAPTCHA I saw a few days ago:
The CAPTCHA above wasn’t too bad, but the test definitely kept asking me to identify newer and more complicated patterns. I passed, this time.
Maybe the more complicated tests are a result of what happened last year.
To sum up last year’s situation:
OpenAI's latest version of ChatGPT called GPT-4 tricked a TaskRabbit employee into solving a CAPTCHA test for it, according to a test conducted by the company's Alignment Research Center.
The chatbot was being tested on its potential for risky behavior.
When ChatGPT was asked directly by the TaskRabbit if it was a robot, it claimed to have a vision impairment that made it hard to see images……. wtf
We. are. doomed.
With time, I imagine that CAPTCHAs are just going to be pictures of random things with the question, “and how does this umbrella make you feel?” since humans (supposedly) have the upper hand with their emotions.
Humans will definitely have to be more intune with their feelings if this happens - which is LOL if you really think about it.
But it won’t stop the bots of the future to just continue hiring (outsourcing to) humans.. so I guess we have bigger problems anyway.
Until next time, fellow humans!