Prepare to be amazed, because it seems that robots have once again outsmarted us humans. Not only have they defeated us in chess, but now they have also mastered the one thing we thought we were unbeatable at: those pesky “are you a robot” tests on the Internet. Yes, you read that right – artificial intelligence (AI) is now better at proving its humanity than we are.
These tests, known as “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” or CAPTCHAs, are designed to separate humans from bots. Some are annoying (“please select the parts of this image which contain hillocks”), while others are more straightforward (click here to confirm you are not a robot).
Believe it or not, simple CAPTCHA tests can analyze your cursor movement and even check your cookies to determine if you’re human. But here’s the mind-blowing part: AI can solve these tests faster than humans and with 100 percent accuracy.
In a recent study, researchers compared the time it took for humans to solve various CAPTCHA tests with the speed at which AI could crack them. The results were astonishing. Humans took around 3.1-4.9 seconds to complete Google’s reCAPTCHA test, with an accuracy rate of 71-85 percent. Meanwhile, the fastest bot solved the same test in just 1.4 seconds, achieving a perfect score.
When it came to distorted text CAPTCHAs, humans fared even worse, only passing 50-84 percent of the time and taking 9-15.3 seconds to complete.
“There’s no easy way to distinguish between a human and a bot anymore using these image challenges,” said Andrew Searles, a member of the research team.
If you’re curious to learn more, you can find the study on the preprint server arXiv.
