Crowd-Powered Systems

Abstract

Crowd-powered systems combine computation with human intelligence, drawn from large groups of people connecting and coordinating online. These hybrid systems enable applications and experiences that neither crowds nor computation could support alone.Unfortunately, crowd work is error-prone and slow, making it difficult to incorporate crowds as first-order building blocks in software. We introduce computational techniques that decompose complex tasks into simpler, verifiable steps to improve quality, and optimize work to return results in seconds. Using these techniques, we prototype a set of interactive crowd-powered systems. The first, Soylent, is a word processor that uses paid micro-contributions to aid writing tasks such as text shortening and proofreading. Using Soylent is like having access to an entire editorial staff as you write. The second system, Adrenaline, is a camera that uses crowds to help amateur photographers capture the exact right moment for a photo. It finds the best smile and catches subjects in mid-air jumps, all in realtime. These systems point to a future where social and crowd intelligence are central elements of interaction, software, and computation.