It’s an all too familiar situation. You’re in the middle of yet another binge shopping spree in the early morning hours and when you try to log in to your account you can’t. You groan when you realize the website is demanding that you complete a CAPTCHA. Well, you’ve just become my latest customer. Afterall, I write CAPTCHAS for a living.
Growing up, I was always a fan of puzzles. And what better way to show my ingenuity as a gamemaster than to write CAPTCHAS that millions of people will ponder every day?
Originally, I started off easy. I wrote letters in fancy fonts already installed on my computer and had readers type in what I wrote. The challenge? Good luck making out that deep navy letter on the black background. Throw in a few squiggles, skew the letters, and a masterpiece has been made.
Over time though, as AI has gotten better at guessing my puzzles I’ve had to up my game. My latest puzzle is my best work yet. The idea came to me one day while I was driving. I didn’t see there was a street light at the intersection and then almost collided with a Smart car that came out of nowhere. Once the initial shock subsided, in a moment of genius I realized that if it was hard for me to identify street lights and other vehicles, there was no way that a computer could!
So later that week I published my new CAPTCHA that requires users to identify regions of images that contain street lights, cars, buses, etc. At this point I’ve made thousands of them, so to help break up the monotony I’ve added extra challenges. For example, maybe you can identify the car, but does the trailer it’s pulling also count? Or should you include the tailpipe that’s sticking out so far? Heck, sometimes I’ll even just throw in a couple extra squares to make sure you have to do another one.
And there you have it. While you might hate CAPTCHAS, don’t forget about the person who writes them for a living.
