Playing "in the Loop". New Human-Software Relations in Human Computation Systems and Their Impact on Spheres of Everyday Life

今天，人们发现算法在许多领域都胜过人类，其速度和准确性远远超过人类的能力，这是无可比拟的。然而，算法在许多人类很容易解决的比较基本的问题上仍然失败。此外，解决这些问题的大多数算法方法都是基于机器学习的，需要人们“在循环中”为算法生成大量的训练数据。一种人类和算法共同努力解决双方都无法轻易解决的问题的方法被称为人类计算。在人类计算领域，人类计算系统（HCS）将特定的计算步骤或任务委托给人类。这是计算机科学中一个新兴的、日益重要的研究领域，在公民科学（CS）领域尤为成功。在这里，项目通常被认为是电脑游戏，参与者在游戏中为特定的研究项目和算法创造剩余价值。虽然HCS提出了许多社会问题，但作为研究领域，它们在文化人类学中几乎没有被探索过。拟建项目致力于这一新的研究领域，重点关注两个方面：一方面，侧重于从学科相关和道德角度对HCS进行调查。这包括关于系统是如何形成的以及人类参与者在其中扮演什么角色的问题。另一方面，该项目侧重于cs项目中的HCS对我们对日常游戏，工作和科学领域的理解的影响，这是我们自我理解的重要参考框架。该项目借鉴了数字人类学和技术领域的理论和概念观点，对（数字）伦理和主体角色的研究，以及对上述日常生活领域意义的探索。三个案例研究构成了项目的核心，并将进行微观分析研究。为了调查HCS中涉及的参与者（开发人员、研究人员、用户和代码）之间的相互作用和相互依赖关系，以及他们共同形成的系统，该方法基于方法三角测量，并且是多视角的。通过结合文化人类学和计算机科学的观点，本项目旨在深入了解HCS及其对日常生活的影响。该项目的目标是促进人工智能领域新兴人机交互的探索，并进一步开放文化人类学对这些跨主题和跨学科现象的跨学科研究。

Today, algorithms are found to outperform humans in various fields, with their speed and accuracy far exceeding human abilities in incomparable manners. However, algorithms still fail on many comparatively basic problems that are easily solved by humans. Moreover, most of the algorithmic approaches to solving these problems are based on machine learning and require people “in the loop” to generate large amounts of training data for the algorithms. An approach in which humans and algorithms work together to tackle problems that neither of them can easily solve on their own is known as Human Computation. Within the realm of human computation, Human Computation Systems (HCS) delegate particular computational steps or tasks to humans. This emerging and increasingly important research area in computer science is especially successful in the area of citizen science (CS). Here, projects are usually conceived as computer games in which participants playfully generate surplus value both for a specific research project and for the algorithms. While HCS raise numerous social questions, as field of research they are almost unexplored in cultural anthropology. The proposed project is dedicated to this new research field and focuses on two aspects: On the one hand, it focuses on the investigation of HCS from a subject-related and moral perspective. This includes questions about how the systems are formed and what role human actors play within them. On the other hand, the project focuses on the impacts that HCS in CS-projects have on our understandings of the daily spheres of play, work and science, that function as important frames of reference for our self-understanding. The project draws on theoretical and conceptual perspectives from the field of digital anthropology and technology, the examination of (digital) ethics and the role of the subject, and the exploration of the meanings of the aforementioned spheres of the everyday life. Three case studies form the core of the project and will be investigated microanalytically. In order to investigate the interplay and mutual dependencies of the actors involved in HCS – developers, researchers, users and code – and thus the systems they have jointly formed, the approach is based on method triangulation and is multi-perspectival. By combining the perspectives of cultural anthropology and computer science this project aims at gaining an in-depth understanding of HCS and their implications on everyday life. The objective of the project is to contribute to the exploration of emerging human-machine interactions in the field of AI and also to further opening cultural anthropology for interdisciplinary research about these cross-thematic and interdisciplinary phenomena.