this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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FOSDEM 2025 - MapTCHA, the open source CAPTCHA that improves OpenStreetMap (fosdem.org)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I only read the text, didn't watch the video, but from the text it didn't sound like that's what they were describing. It sounded like they will present images to people and ask them to confirm whether or not there's an object there?

We introduce “MapTCHA”, a CAPTCHA that leverages the uncertainty of interpreting imagery with computer vision, and provides human verification for AI predictions: users are asked to identify images containing correctly interpreted objects, e.g. building outlines.

Edit: also, here's the github they seem to be working from - https://github.com/ciupava/maptcha_dev

Edit 2: I hope they succeed, because it would be great to have an open source captcha that benefits everyone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The big question though is: why?

CAPTCHA was implemented because machine learning was worse than people at solving the problems, so they could filter out the bots AND train their algorithms.

Today, the bots are often better than the humans, so both reasons for having CAPTCHAS no longer make sense. Even user verification can be easily faked by AI now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm not sure.

Perhaps getting computer vision that's reliably better than humans costs a lot of money that a project like OpenStreetMap doesn't have?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Could be… it makes sense to reinvent the wheel if the previous inventors won’t share.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

They explain it in the video. They already use algorithms to detect if things are buildings or not.

But if their algorithm can't make a determination or is uncertain below a certain threshold, they send it to Maptcha to get a bulk human opinion.