1. Autonomous Car Trainers

Let’s start with the one that most people already know about- or if they don’t, they at least have an idea of what’s going on. reCAPTCHA version 2 is Google’s second attempt to stop robots from accessing various webpages or web services. CAPTCHA actually stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.

This nifty little tool acts like a club bouncer. You’ll only be allowed to proceed if you provide the information it’s looking for. More often than not you’ll be asked to select crosswalks, buses, fire hydrants, or traffic lights, etc from a series of images. Not too difficult, right?

Well, Google is of the opinion that they should kill two birds with one stone. Why shouldn’t the corporation weasel in some free work from users through reCAPTCHA? In this case, you’re basically training autonomous cars, making sure they’re ready to take to the streets. The more items you correctly identify the faster the AI behind self-driving cars will learn.

Instead of paying a whole host of people to do this mundane task every day, Google chose to pass the task along to us. Is it really worth it?

Our picture selection will hasten the process of perfecting driverless cars but we sure would like to be paid for it!