The Collaborative Human Interpreter (CHI) is a proposed software interface for human-based computation

Human-based computation

Human-based computation is a computer science technique in which a computational process performs its function by outsourcing certain steps to humans...

 (first proposed as a programming language on the blog Google Blogoscoped

Google Blogoscoped

Google Blogoscoped is a blog authored by Philipp Lenssen covering the search engine company Google since 2003.Blogoscoped reports mainly on product releases but also offers tips and tutorials and tracks any projects of the Mountain View, California company...

, but implementable via an API in virtually any programming language) specially designed for collecting
and making use of human intelligence

Human intelligence

Human Intelligence may refer to:* Human intelligence in the species as the property of mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, plan, problem solve, think, comprehend ideas, use languages, and learn....

 in a computer program

Computer program

A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...

.
One typical usage is implementing impossible-to-automate functions.

For example, it is currently difficult for a computer to differentiate between images of men

Man

The term man is used for an adult human male . However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole...

, women

Woman

A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...

 and non-humans. However, this is easy for people. A programmer using CHI could write a code fragment along these lines:

enum GenderCode {
MALE, FEMALE, NOT_A_HUMAN
}
Photo photo = loadPhoto(file)
GenderCode result = checkGender(photo)

Code for the function checkGender(Photo p) can currently only approximate a result,
but the task be can be easily solved by a person.
When the function checkGender is called, the system will send a request to someone,
and the person who received the request will process the task and input the result.
If the person (task processor) inputs value MALE,
you'll get the value in your variable result, in your program.
This querying process can be highly automated.

Deployment

On November 6, 2005, Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

 launched
CHI as its business platform in the Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk

The Amazon Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace that enables computer programmers to co-ordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks that computers are unable to do yet. It is one of the suites of Amazon Web Services...

 http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome. It's the first business application using CHI.

Origins

CHI is originally mentioned in Philipp Lenssen's blog

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-03-25-n43.html.

External links

• "Amazon looks to solve problems that stump computers", ZDnet, Nov 10, 2005 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-145545.html