Luis von Ahn. Telling the world that you are an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University at 26 sounds very impressive. For Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn, he is just a dot in his long CV.
Όταν ήταν 12 ετών, ο Luis von Ahn είχε μια τρομερή ιδέα για δωρεάν γυμναστήρια. Οι ασκούμενοι παράγουν ενέργεια που χάνεται, και αν υπήρχαν machineματα που μετατρέπουν αυτή την ενέργεια σε ηλεκτρική θα μπορούσαν να μην χρειάζονται οι αμοιβές στα γυμναστήρια. Αν και η ιδέα αυτή δεν έγινε ποτέ πραγματικότητα οι δύο εταιρείες του Captcha και ReCAPTCHA not only did they become famous in the online community.
In 2000, web-based e-mails, although they were a huge success, also had a very big problem: spammers bombarded users from automatically created accounts, and as soon as one account was closed, a new one was created. A way to distinguish them was urgently needed people by automated visitors.
Luis von Ahn, then 22, discovered a solution a few weeks after graduating from school. Together with his boss Manuel Blum, von Ahn introduced the "Fully Automated Public Turing test that distinguishes Computers from Humans" (free translation of the "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", or simply Captcha).
2007, the transition from Captcha to ReCAPTCHA has come a sophisticated test that you all know. ReCAPTCHA, apart from separating bots from people, could also help digitize books.
In 2008, when the newspaper New York Times asked Luis to digitize their huge archive (27 years of articles took 10 years to digitize), took on reCAPTCHA and digitized 129 years of articles in less than 24 months.
Von Ahn's two companies have made him the most sought-after scientist information technologyin the world. Bill Gates himself called Luis to hire him at Microsoft, and he politely declined.
It is currently creating a new revolution through Duolingo, a language learning application that has given billions of lessons to more than 120 millions of users around the world.
And this time, Luis is one step ahead. Duolingo helps educate the world by translating the entire web, using progressively smarter teaching applications through mechanical learning.
TNW information.
