EBird: A Model For Other Citizen Science Projects?
Wednesday, December 21, 2011 - 19:20
in Mathematics & Economics
Modern technology has helped scientists solve many difficult problems, but occasionally there are some achievements that can only be managed by harnessing the power of the human brain. Animal identification, for instance, is a complex process during which observers consider several characteristics--shape, size, behavior--under different circumstances, ponder which species are likely to be present at that time and place, and then choose the correct match. According to collaborators from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, writing in a recent issue of the scientific journal PLoS Biology, this is a task that is "beyond the scope of existing artificial intelligence algorithms" and can only be accomplished by human observers. read more