Preface

Human computation is a relatively new research area that studies how to build intelligent systems that involve human computers, with each of them performing computation (for example, image classification, translation, and protein folding) that leverages human intelligence, but challenges even the most sophisticated AI algorithms that exist today. With the immense growth of the Web, human computation systems can now leverage the abilities of an unprecedented number of Internet users to perform complex computation. Various genres of human computation applications are available today, including games with a purpose (for example, the ESP Game) that generate useful data through gameplay, crowdsourcing marketplaces (for example, Amazon Mechanical Turk) that coordinate workers to perform tasks for monetary rewards, and identity verification systems (for example, reCAPTCHA) that generate useful data through users performing computation for access to online content. Despite the variety of human computation applications, there exist many common core research issues. How can we design mechanisms for querying human computers in such a way that incentivizes or encourages truthful responses?