Today, Google launched Google Images Labeler, a game with this description:
You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner’s label, you’ll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you’ve seen and the websites where those images were found. And we’ll show you the points you’ve earned throughout the session.
What the description should say is this:
You’ll be paired with a brain dead and partially blind fucktard who can’t spell or type. Over a 90-second period, you will loose all faith in humanity and have a homicidal rage build inside you to the point where you think that Jeffrey Dahmer might have been on to something. When you finally debase your mind to think how your opponent thinks, you may be allowed to look at the next image. After time expires, if you have not thrown your computer out your window or succeeded in committing suicide, you may continue to torture yourself by playing again
Don’t believe me? Let’s walk through a typical game . . .
You press start and this picture comes on the screen:

So you quickly bang out “candle”, “white candle”, “flame”, “fire”, “dark”, “wax” and “glow” in the first 4 seconds. The clock has counted down from 1:30 to 1:21 and your partner has entered one label that matches none of yours. Finally at 1:15 he puts in “candle” (100 points) and the next image appears:

You type “child”, “girl”, “young”, “cute”, “adorable”, “blonde”, “smirk”, “smile”. The donkey has typed 9 labels and none match. You press pass and when the clock counts down to 1:00 and he passes too. What the hell was that idiot typing?!? Ears? Marble? . . . Sexy!?! The next image pops up:

So you type in “Tom Cruise”. Mr. Asshat has one label. Instinctively, you know that he can’t spell “cruise” and type “tom cruze” for a quick match and you’re down to 0:55 with 200 points:

You type “disco”, “party”, “nightclub”, “bar”, “purple” . . . Your tormentor waits 5 seconds and wants to pass. WTF? Is that really that hard? Whatever, this next one will be easy:

You feverishly type “Beach”, “Sunset”, “Beach Sunset” and pause for a sec, the clock now reads 0:35. That fucktard has typed 2 labels. So you scramble to bang out “ocean”, “clouds”, “sun”, “skyline”, “waves”, “wave”, “reflection”, “running” . . . meanwhile that waste of oxygen on the other keyboard is up to 3 now and the clock reads 0:25. You type “runner”, “water”, “yellow”, and finally have a match with “orange” at 0:21.
At this point you want to reach through the screen and slap the shit out of that loser. “Orange”? Are you fucking kidding me? Who the hell looks at that picture and says “Orange is the best way to describe this one”. How is that going to help anyone? It’s a picture of a Beach Sunset and says BEACH SUNSET on it. And what the hell were his other 3 labels?!? But no time to think about that now, this image has just loaded on the screen with 20 seconds to go:

So you quickly type “railway”, “tracks”, “rail tracks”, “train tracks”, “train”, “rail”, “rails”, “tracks”. He has 4 labels . . . the clock is down to :08. You type “building”, “skyline”, “gloomy” . . . the clock says :02 and you type “I wanna kill that douchebag!” BUZZZZ time’s up. You scored a total of 300 points with your “partner”.
Your girlfriend asks you “what wrong?” as you are holding a fist full of your own hair in each hand.
Wanna play again?
17 Responses to “Google Images Labeler Proves Most People are Fucktards”
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. Thanks!
That last photo looks like Auschwitz.
Damn… I just tried a few rounds. You’re right.
funny, though the last pic is from Auschwitz, some people don’t immediately think about the tracks when they see that pic.
the last pic is definately from Auschwitz.. I will give it a try too.. thnx for mentioning.. we will close our windows before we start..
Well if everyone knew that was Auchwitz but me, then I guess I’m a fucktard too!
In other words: “I’m sticking with my original Story.”
I also give it up.. really annoying game.. hopefully they change it
This is a rip-off of the ESP game:
http://www.espgame.org/ (out since jan 04, see http://del.icio.us/url/a34896e3f26c8718a49894d8d7a98817 )
Their aim is to collect metadata on pictures… However, the gaming aspect might encourage to use tags as generic as possible, to maximize the hit rate… so I’m not sure whether it’ll improve image search that much…
Have you seen this Google Tech talk?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143
hehe, sorry, should have watched that video entirely before posting…
the plague of generic tags is being solved by using “taboo words”…
[…] Google Images Labeler Proves Most People are… Um, yeah, nice title. But totally believable. (tags: google photo social web2.0) […]
[…] Microsoft is a monster because of the power of the default - IE installed with Windows. I got screwed out of $300 last month because of the power of the default (Adbrite story coming soon). Assuming that users understand the full consequences of posting their private information, when they can’t even spell “Tom Cruise”, is erroneous. Expecting them to change the default settings on their Facebook accounts, or even knowing how to or that the option exists, is even more presumptive. And while the Digg crowd likes to scoff at people for “going with the default settings” like using IE6 instead of Firefox, the reality is that defaults have great power in themselves. When Facebook changed the default to allow all your activities to be viewed, as opposed to making it an option, it really aggravated the invasion of privacy issue. […]
It seems really obvious to me that you’re actually playing against a computer intellgence and not another human. IMO. Wonder how long Google can keep that a secret. Seems like they are testing their image identificaiton AI against real humans–you and me.
Yes, it was obvious from nearly the beginning that one is playing against an AI program. Sometimes as soon as the picture appears the “partner” has entered 2 or even more words, not enough time for them to do so and have your screen updated. Also, pictures repeat after only a few runs so it is NOT really identifying things for searches, even if it isn’t AI, it at least is a Beta. Also, the “partner” almost never asks to pass, I have only seen one request to pass plus a few times for blank pictures. Occasionally when pictures repeat they disallow the word you matched before but usually not, implying that a word gets disallowed after it has been matched many times.
BUT WAIT! I think all this makes it MORE interesting than if I was playing against another person. I would quit playing if I thought I was playing other people, I don’t care for competition with other humans (one reason I like square dancing, where the object is to cooperate and work together). This is presumeably a self learning AI program, and I could be helping to create the first true Turing machine, HAL, or MYCROFTXXX.
Also, it (google’s AI program) is improving. At first I rarely got 700. Then 1100 occasionally. Now I get 1400 more than rarely. I have *NOT* improved that much, the AI has gotten better.
It is fun to go back and review what the “partner” guessed, and sometimes to follow the links to see what the picture REALLY was. I have found several cool websites that way.
If everybody who played solitaire umpteen hours a day did this instead, it would be much better for their mental health.
Since I seem to disagree with the owner of this, it will be interesting to see if my submissions are approved.
One of the links I followed from GIL or researching GIL (e.g. how I found this site) claimed that 8.6 BILLION hours per year were spent on on the solitaire game alone.
[…] Maybe there’s a reason Google has been less receptive than Yahoo to using low level user generated data in their products. […]
I like how you weave in the comedy with your blog while providing quality seo info, this post had me rollin It was easy to picture the guy on the other computer. Hilarious!!!
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For the third image you could have tried “vanilla sky” and “Auschwitz” for the last one. Every people don’t think the same way. It’s not such a bad news
imo