Carnegie Mellon University researchers hope Web surfers will spend their free time playing Internet-based games to help other people's and businesses' computers get smarter.
The researchers have launched a site with five games designed to help computers with tasks they can't automatically do. The tasks include improving computer searches for images or audio clips.
For example, if you search on the Web for "sad songs," a search engine will generally show you links to audio files containing "sad" in the filename. But by getting people to describe audio clips as sad in online games like Tag a Tune, researchers can improve searches for audio files.
Other games include ESP, in which opposing players are shown a picture and try to guess what words the other player will use to describe the image.
Players don't communicate with one another or see one another's answers; the games tell them just that they've made a match.
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