I, for one, welcome our traffic light-identifying overlords.

Anyone who has been surfing the web for a while is probably used to clicking through a CAPTCHA grid of street images, identifying everyday objects to prove that they’re a human and not an automated bot. Now, though, new research claims that locally run bots using specially trained image-recognition models can match human-level performance in this style of CAPTCHA, achieving a 100 percent success rate despite being decidedly not human.

ETH Zurich PhD student Andreas Plesner and his colleagues’ new research, available as a pre-print paper, focuses on Google’s ReCAPTCHA v2, which challenges users to identify which street images in a grid contain items like bicycles, crosswalks, mountains, stairs, or traffic lights. Google began phasing that system out years ago in favor of an “invisible” reCAPTCHA v3 that analyzes user interactions rather than offering an explicit challenge.

Despite this, the older reCAPTCHA v2 is still used by millions of websites. And even sites that use the updated reCAPTCHA v3 will sometimes use reCAPTCHA v2 as a fallback when the updated system gives a user a low “human” confidence rating.

  • blattrules@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    I never get the first one and rarely the second one. If it says to click all the squares with motorcycles and it’s just the one big picture, am I supposed to click stuff like the tire and mirrors? I always do and never get it right. Then most of the time they ask me to identify motorcycles, they show me motor scooters and what am I supposed to do then? I think I just need to get one of these bots to do it for me.

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      51·
      2 months ago

      Fwiw they aren’t really asking about the motorcycle. I mean they are but they are washing your mouse movements and how fast you click through the images. It’s okay to get a few images wrong.

      • pixxelkick@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        2 months ago

        Not quite.

        It’s mostly wisdom of the crowd, as it always has been.

        As long as you mostly click the same squares most other people click, you pass.

        You often at random get 2-3 images because 2 of them are actual checks, but the third is a new image that you auto pass and they’re using it to gather data on what the average clicks are on it.

    • IlovethebombEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      A motor scooter is a motorcycle in the eyes of the law.

      • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Not everywhere.

        Where I am, you need a special license to drive a motorcycle, classified as having an engine of 51ccs or more, whereas a scooter is any motorcycle with a less than 51ccs and doesn’t require a special license.

        • IlovethebombEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          That’s a moped, a motor scooter is just a style of bike.

          • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            11·
            2 months ago

            Mopeds are similar but have pedals and can be used as a bicycle. The name itself, Mo-Ped" is a portmanteau for motor and pedal.

            Motor scooters are different in that they have a cut out for the rider’s legs/ feet so they don’t have to straddle it the same way they would with a motorcycle. Both mopeds and motor scooters do not require a license endorsement here, while motorcycles, as defined in my original comment, do.

              • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                11·
                2 months ago

                So a moped with a 49cc engine, astep-through design, and no pedals is a moped but a scooter with a step-through design and 49cc engine is a motorcycle?

                That’s confusing as fuck lol

                • IlovethebombEnglish
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  Not really, both your examples are a moped. The definition of a moped in most places has nothing to do with the style of bike.