Automatically determining the contents of an image is a problem far from being solved by Arti cial Intelligence (AI) techniques. In this paper we introduce a simple game that is fun to play and has the following unique property: when humans play the game, they help computers determine the contents of images. We present a study providing evidence that the game is fun. If played by a large number of people, this game could provide a resource capable of classifying all images on the World Wide Web. This represents a novel form of interaction between humans and computers, a symbiosis in which humans playing the game are entertained and computers running the game obtain answers to problems they can't solve. Thus, we introduce a much more general idea: computer games can be used to solve hard AI problems.

9 pages

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