This CEO is paying 600,000 strangers to help him build human-powered AI that's 'whole orders of magnitude better than Google'

One of the worst-kept secrets in Silicon Valley is that it takes a whole lot of human labour to make artificial intelligence…intelligent.

The best example: When Google’s reCAPTCHA pages ask you to identify street signs or storefronts in photos before you can log in, you’re proving you’re not a robot, sure. You’re also providing valuable, human insight into what a street sign looks like, which is extremely useful data when you’re trying to train a self-driving car, or a smart security camera. The whole concept was memorably lampooned in an episode last year of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.”

Enter Hive, a Silicon Valley-based startup that’s embracing this human element to provide AI-powered image recognition that’s “orders of magnitude better than Google,” as cofounder Kevin Guo puts it. Guo’s cofounder Dmitriy Karpman actually dropped out of a prestigious PhD program at Stanford University to make Hive a reality; Guo got his Masters degree there before entering the tech industry.

The secret of Hive, says Guo, is that it’s turned training an AI into a kind of game – one with real cash prizes. Read more

Matt Weinberger - Business Insider Australia - 22 Oct 2018