Unfortunately, crowd work is error-prone and slow, making it difficult
to incorporate crowds as first-order building blocks in software
systems. I introduce computational techniques that decompose complex
tasks into simpler, verifiable steps to improve quality, and optimize
work to return results in seconds. These techniques advance
crowdsourcing into a platform that is reliable and responsive to the
point where crowds can be used in interactive systems.
In this talk, I will present two crowd-powered systems to illustrate
these ideas. 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.