Abstract:

The scienceathome.org project within the interdisciplinary Center for Community Driven Research at Aarhus University works on developing online citizen science games - enabling ordinary users of the internet to contribute to the solution of cutting edge research challenges. The first games within quantum physics and cognitive and social sciences have been played more than 500,000 times and clearly demonstrated the superiority of the human mind over computer algorithms for certain tasks. In the talk I will briefly review these results but focus more deeply on our new games developed in collaboration with social scientists in which general collective problem solving can be studied: In the Alien game we study the social dynamics when players of various social status are allowed to exchange hints, in the Gold Mine game we have conducted experimental tests in which up to 100 players collaborate to collectively solve a predefined problem, and finally I will discuss the demo of our newest game in which players can collaborate online to build predefined constructions using virtual LEGO bricks.

Jacob Sherson is Associate Professor at Department of Physics and Astronomy at AU