The Role of Game Theory in Human Computation Systems

Abstract

The paradigm of "human computation" seeks to harness human abilities to solve computational problems or otherwise perform distributed work that is beyond the scope of current AI technologies. One aspect of human computation has become known as "games with a purpose" and seeks to elicit useful computational work in fun (typically) multi-player games. Human computation also encompasses distributed work (or "peer production") systems such as Wikipedia and Question and Answer forums. In this short paper, we survey existing game-theoretic models for various human computation designs, and outline research challenges in advancing a theory that can enable better design.