Now That's Using Your Brain The key to Luis von Ahn's success
lies not just in what he does, but in what you do: von Ahn
develops techniques that utilize the computational abilities of
humans. His innovations have earned him top honors, such as the
MacArthur Foundation's "genius grant," a Microsoft New Faculty
Fellowship, and a spot on Popular Science's list of 10 Brilliant
Scientists of 2006. As the name suggests, human computation
relies on the processing power of people to solve problems that
computers cannot yet solve. The potential of human computation
peaked von Ahn's interest while he was working on his doctoral
degree in computer science at Carnegie Mellon. "Ten to 20 years
ago it was impossible to coordinate more than 100,000 people on
one project," he explained, "but the Internet allows 100 million
people to work together on the same thing." And 100 million
people are an unparalleled resource. Because the Internet is
becoming increasingly ubiquitous, millions of people are online
at any given moment