It is not time to panic. This is not the end of internet verification checks to make sure we’re humans. This is not the final triumph of bots over bods.
This is just the tale of one robotic arm using a capacitive stylus to move a mouse on a stylus in that quivery, human-like manner that hopefully/sometimes assures online sites that we’re human.
The video was uploaded by YouTuber Matt Unsworth – about whom we know precious little besides the fact that he has access to googly eyes to put on top of his robot arm – last Tuesday.
The robot, clutching the stylus in its claw, ticks off the “I’m not a robot” button after some painfully slow scritching. Then, it opens its claw wide and lets loose the stylus in a perfect mic drop.
…A la our recently departed POTUS No. 44:
It well may be controlled by a human behind the scenes. If that human has plans to trick sites into falling for nefarious robots who really are robots even if they’re faking quivery human movement, he’s going to have to pick up the pace.
After all, CAPTCHAs – Completely Automated Procedures for Telling Computers and Humans Apart – are designed to make it costly and complicated for crooks to write programs that can rapidly do things like register for hundreds of free email accounts. Not slowly, painfully register for hundreds of free email accounts at a pace of a snail frozen in February molasses.
We got the quivery click test a few years ago, when Google simplified its prove-you’re-a-human reCAPTCHA test. To prove we’re not automated bots, it gave us a single, hopefully quivery “I’m not a robot” click to replace the previous deciphering of blobby melted characters and mathematical problems that made our brains hurt.
Google called the new version Invisible reCAPTCHA.
Announced in December, the free service is designed to protect sites and apps from spam and abuse without any need for users to click in a quivery human fashion, select all the kitten pictures on their mobile devices or jump through whatever other hoops developers set up to prove we’re real.
So basically, googly-eyed robot arm can gloat about having beaten the “I’m not a robot test,” and sure, pixellated sunglasses can drop down onto its googly eyes because it thinks it’s all that, but c’mon, it beat Captcha technology that’s on the brink of being outmoded.
Deal with THAT, googly-eyed robot arm!
FreedomISaMYTH
this is awesome, thank you!
Bob Westmoore
This robot is not actually “beating” the captcha.. it’s a novelty “joke” and nothing more. (its is entertaining.. and bravo to the creater for 60 seconds of humour) The fact is, that the computer being used has a history with google when it was being used by a HUMAN. To Google, it has already determined it’s not a robot before it even clicks on that captcha. the algorithm (while secret) takes many things into account like, repetition, IP address, cookies, previous google searches etc. this “robot” has all of those (from the previous human use) , so of course it passes.
Bryan
+1, agreed
That, plus
– it’s highly unlikely the robot is programmed** to do anything else besides calibrate the size of a touchpad and make a checkmark.
– this already takes advantage of semantics, as Google’s original choice of the word acknowledges that “robot” simply *sounds* cooler than “surreptitious program designed to break into our stuff,” which is closer to what they really meant.
Far from groundbreaking tech–not to detract from how great this video is, as it’s quite entertaining.
** if it’s programmed at all and not merely being controlled like a car or drone
veronica
i think its fake
Anonymous
Robots are awesome. They are our future
Anonymous
befor they end the world and make a human zoo
Hi Hi
The robot in the video was obviously programmed by a human because how would it pick up the stylus and why would it have googly eyes? Also someone was obviously videoing it, so it was planned.
Anonymous
but I am an android! does that count?
Anonymous
I do not neccicarily think this object is doing this, nor different.
Anonymous
wuz up 2020
Anonymous
Why are you even here?
Sienna
2020 anyone?