by NANCY GONGLIKWANYEOHEEEEEEEH, Alternate Reality News Service Technology Writer
Logging on to a website shouldn’t be as embarrassing as interpreting a Rorschach ink blot naked in front of a convention hall full of psychotherapists hungry for their next academic research project. That it has come to this has been the source of as much eager psychiatric speculation as a federal election.
Like many people, when Herbert Palisades (not his real name, but near enough that his closest friends and relatives are likely to guess his identity, so they should stop reading now), tried to access his Girls With Eyepatches account, he was confronted with nine colourful blobs and instructed to choose the ones that were marsupials, then check the “I am not a bot, but I am hot” button. (Bots had to enter the site by the back door.) Since none of the blobs could be accurately described as “living entities,” Palisades did what any easily frustrated person in his position would do: he refreshed the page.
He was presented with nine different, but equally baffling (so much so that you could soundproof a condo with them) images. This time, he was asked to choose the images that were not Albert Einstein. Admittedly, some of the images had frizzy white patches that could have been the physicist’s famous coif, and one even had a legible nose. Otherwise, it was Rorschach time.
At this point, some people would have given up and tried to get on their Steam, Punk! account in order to relieve their stress by playing Rororoyerblox, but Palisades was made of sterner stuff (wooden and stuck at the ass end of things), so he kept trying. The next time he refreshed the page, he was asked to check the boxes that showed a three speed blender next to a guard ferret. The next time, fire hydrants that dogs hadn’t peed on. The time after that, a baby’s arm holding an apple. Occasionally, one of the images would actually look like the category, but that would leave eight blobby images to choose from.
Palisades needed a strategy.
Those who couldn’t go a day without a Girls With Eyepatches fix adopted a variety of approaches to the problem. Some members randomly chose squares, with little success. Others tried repeatedly choosing a single pattern of squares (often the last winning combination they had playing tic-tac-toe), with little success. Some threw darts at the screen with little success…and a sudden need to replace their screen.
Only one in seventeen members who tried to log on were able to access their Girls With Eyepatches account. The rest were told that they were clearly bots, naughty naughty bots, and they should stop being this way, because it was a lifestyle choice, not inherent in their being. Oh, and they were locked out of their accounts for 24 hours to contemplate their naughty naughtiness.
“I had my complete collection of Girls With Eyepatches magazines to fall back on, of course,” Palisades complained, “but I missed all of the interactive features of the website! Cherry, won’t you please say ‘Aaar’ for me!”
Has Girls With Eyepatches instituted a new exclusivity policy? “I wish!” sighed CEOess Minerva Megamporium (she’s Dutch). “If we had, people would be signing up by the thousands to be denied access! But, alas, no, we were just economizing…”
In this case, economizing meant entering into a contract with Universal Impanishad, a wholly owned subsidiary of MultiNatCorp (We do…inscrutable stuff), to develop RaptchasTM at a fraction of the cost that Local Irrigationism, a wholly owned subsidiary of…itself, produced GotchasTM. “We couldn’t believe what a bargain it was!”
When people started having trouble logging on to their accounts, the bargainous nature of the contract became more believable. Painfully more believable. Bottom line threateningly believable.
UI uses AI to create all of the images used in RaptchasTM.
What? No interruption? He – the man who usually interrupts at the first mention of artificial intelligence must be stuck in traffic. No matter: he can catch up when he gets here.
“We had heard such great things about AI,” explained Ralph Waldo Emergentproperties, “we thought we could build a lucrative business supplying websites with an endless stream of unique RaptchasTM. The technology was dead easy. The business was dead in the water.”
This isn’t like him. He’s usually punctual to a fault. A San Andreas fault. I hope nothing bad has happened to him. In the meantime, let’s get back to the article…
Not only did an AI generate the images, but a second AI created the theme which the first AI would use to generate the images, thus eliminating all human input in the process. “Even allowing for my outrageous salary and bonuses, we could produce RaptchaTMs at a fraction of the cost. The fact that most of them could not be negotiated most of the time was a case of YGWYPF, but I’m off on a two month vacation to an undisclosed location, so bitch to somebody else!”
If we were making as much money as she is, we’d be living in a musical, too.
Ah, here we go. Founder and Executive Director of Bastard AI Governance and Safety, Canada Wyatt Tessari L’Allie (his real name) just sent me an email from his laptop explaining that thanks to a RaptchaTM to find 12 different species of circus clowns, he was locked out of his phone. If I had been able to interview him, I’m sure he would have said, “Bastard AI!” or something equally pithy, yet redolent.