Anthony Tomasic

Crowdsourcing can be thought of as reversing the typical relationship between humans and computing devices (desktops, mobile, sensors, etc.). In the typical relationship, a human asks a computing device to solve a problem like "compute this function" or "show me my mail." From one point of view, crowdsourcing can be considered as the machine asking the human to solve a problem ("count the people on the bus," "check that this prediction is correct"). In my work, I look at issues involved in crafting the crowdsourcing experience at the intersection of the human-sensible world and the machine-sensible world to solve problems. In almost every case this intersection requires machine-learning-based reasoning. I also work on main-memory databases.