The HPU

Computer-mediated, human micro-labor markets have so far been treated as novelty services good for cheaply labeling training data and easy user studies. This paper´s primary contribution is conceptual, the claim that these markets can be characterized as Human co-Processing Units (HPU), and represent a first class computational platform. In the same way that Graphics Processing Units (GPU) represent a change in architecture from CPU based computation, HPU based computation is different, and deserves careful characterization and study. We demonstrate the value of this claim by showing that simplistic HPU computation can be more accurate than complex CPU based algorithms on some important computer vision tasks. We also argue that HPU computation can be cheaper than state-of-the-art CPU based computation. Finally we give some examples of characterizing the HPU as an architectural platform.