Man-Computer Symbiosis

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October issue of Communications of the ACM reports about a scientific paper that shows how a complex scientific problem of predicting protein structure can be solved by harvesting brain-power of 57.000+ people. The integration of human problem-solving capabilities with computational algorithms has enormous potential that might fundamentally change the world. While machines excel at computation, humans shine at pattern recognition. By combining the two, many intractable problems can be solved.

There are 1.4B people living below the $1.25 poverty line and at current pace of mobile phones penetration, even the poorest people will soon own a mobile phone. Even a basic mobile phone enables somebody to receive a problem, to post a solution and to get a payment. If we would be able to map important problems to a large number of people, reduce them to small cogs in a humongous analytic machine, and harvest a solution, everyone would benefit.

Just like Zynga has stormed the world by social gaming, some future start-up might fundamentally change the lives of hundreds millions of poorest people in the world for the better by social problem solving, earning billions along the way.

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It is almost 15 years since Kasparov lost against Deep Blue. I think it is time for human race to take back supremacy in chess by intelligently harnessing our brain power. I know I would be most thrilled to take part in such a match.

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