Daily Archives: November 7, 2005

Refreshing

Very interesting:

AUSTRALIANS could be drinking treated sewage within a decade thanks to “good” bacteria in clean water feasting on germs.

CSIRO researchers injected treated sewage into a Perth aquifer as part of a $3million trial of the water for domestic, agricultural and industry use.

The researchers found that natural bacteria in the aquifers “eat” dangerous germs and viruses.

Further tests will investigate whether the aquifers can be used as part of the water treatment process.

What a great story. It has familiar elements — bacteria, sewage, the need for clean drinking water — plus a surprise ending.

Talk About Outsourcing

From today’s Kurzweil roundup:

Amazon creates artificial artificial intelligence

Amazon.com has launched a new program called Amazon Mechanical Turk, through which a computer can ask humans to perform tasks that it can’t do itself, such as identifying objects in photographs.

I knew it was just a matter of time before lazy, spoiled computers started palming work off on us. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a dozen times: this is what happens when you coddle them.

From the original article:

Examples of what humans can do for computers? Evaluate beauty, translate text and find specific objects in photos.

I should really stop carping and just be glad that we’re still good for something. Of the three things listed above, the first one might well be the final hold-out for humanity’s ability to add value. Machines are already translating text and it shouldn’t be too long before they can identify objects in photos. But long after machines can outperform us in either of those tasks, they may continue to seek input from us because of our quirky aesthetic tastes.