This Captcha

m_f@midwest.social to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 495 points –

Does warmer mean temperature? Color? Something else?

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To train ai models

Yep, in this case they're trying to train an AI on more abstract or "human" characteristics like whether or not something appears warm. That's what these kinds of captchas are doing though, they're outsourcing AI training.

The original captchas were to help computers read scanned books for OCR. It was a neat solution that had value where it prevented abuse on websites and helped open up knowledge to people.

Now captchas aren't needed because of cookies and fingerprinting and tech companies know if you're malicious or not. They kept it going because it's so valuable to tech companies.