Video games help science progress

Science is about big brains, little geniuses who have found their calling and dedicated their lives to solving problems that could help all of humanity. Yes, until not so long ago. Indeed, since the early 2000s and the ideas of Luis Von Ahn, science has become less and less about a particularly developed brain. Instead, it is thousands of more modest intelligences working together to solve a problem that is impossible to overcome alone.

In practice, what does that mean?

It’s simple, some problems, like the well-known “Where’s Waldo” are more a question of time than of skills. Of course, someone who knows how to search for our friend in white and red methodically will find him faster than someone who searches randomly. On the other hand, if we play two against one, even with a lousy method, we will often beat the methodical one. The researcher Luis Von Ahn understood this a little before everyone else, and decided that instead of doing two against one, he was going to make a team of millions of players.

To date, his greatest success is the “ReCaptcha”, a system in which we are asked to copy something in order to prove that we are not a robot. Our researcher has added his own twist to this system, transforming it from online verification to scientific contribution. To understand his idea, he …

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