Today, You are able to search on Google using images instead of words, and Google Translate allows you to converse in multiple languages without learning a single one of them, You can easily sort your Google Photos for anything e.g “Red Dresses” “Elon Musk” and it will show all related results in your library.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Kudos to the amazing engineers at Google for building these applications. At the core of what they built is a technology that is able of processing input like a human mind would and carry out specific actions like identifying which color is red, Which object is a table, and if a person is wearing a black shirt or probably smiling described as Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence can be explained as computers that are empowered to think and perform actions that are like or even better and/or fast than humans. These computers also go through a learning process that helps them develop this intelligence and they are constantly improving as well by collecting feedback, learning, and adjusting to offer better results called Machine Learning

Now that you understand what machine learning or artificial intelligence means, Perhaps, it helps you paint a better picture of how your different apps work but how are Data gathered and used to train these apps?

There are a lot of technical and non-technical ways to do that but In this article, we will focus on a non-technical approach to improving AI or more specifically Google's own AI

Google Crowdsource

Crowdsourcing involves a group of people coming together to form specific tasks for an organization. Building on that knowledge, Google created the Google Crowdsource platform to enable users to perform some specific tasks in exchange for incentives.

These Tasks include;

• Image Label Verification, Image Caption, Handwriting Recognition, Reading Charts, Trust in Charts, Food Facts, Food Labeller, Food Compare, and Audio Donation

And The Incentives often come in the form of

• community recognition, gift packs, merchs, community roles as well as the experience required to apply for translator jobs, for example by contributing to Audio Donations.

Some of the most popular contributions are Food Labeller, Image Recognition, and Audio Donations. Various google crowdsources communities host physical hangouts around them and get people to contribute together in real-time.

How to Contribute

Contribututing to Google Crowdsource is easy. You can either visit their website on your browser or download the app on your google play store using this link. Once you have signed up, you will have access to all of the various tasks you can contribute to.

To Contribute to Translation Tasks, You will be required to select the language you want to contribute to and You will be provided short phrases or sentences in the source language and will then have to give your translation in your chosen language.

Providing accurate and honest translations is important because your contributions are reviewed with that of others and they affect how Google's language-based products and services work.

In the case of transcription tasks, you will listen to short audio clips and be required to type out the words you hear. It is also important to include any relevant punctuation and be accurate.

Image labeling tasks require you to label the objects or concepts in different images. You need to carefully observe the images and label them correctly using the provided categories

Completing these various tasks earns you points and you also progress across new levels. The more tasks you complete, the higher your level will be, and the more types of tasks you will be able to access.

The tasks are designed to be quick and easy to complete, and you can work on them at your own pace. You can also track your progress and see how you compare to other contributors on the leaderboard.

The Google Crowdsource App is an opportunity to also learn new skills like language translation beyond just improving Google's products and services as you'll also have the opportunity to improve your language proficiency. It's a great way to make a difference and contribute to a global community of volunteers.