Crowdsourcing, to the uninitiated, is akin to putting up questions in Quora and waiting for the community to give answers. Nothing could be more further than the truth. We’ve seen how crowdsourcing have changed cognitive-heavy endeavors like publishing an encyclopedia which required massive amounts of intellectual resource and time being superseded by the likes of Wikipedia. In essence, crowdsourcing allows anyone to use the Internet, offer them work and collect their contributions.

Microtasking

Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been used as a means to fund projects for creative ideas from artists and innovators alike. But these platforms are used to collect money rather than work. How can we make it easier to collect intellectual contributions from the crowd in an easier and efficient manner?

For any given work or intellectual tasks, splitting it up into smaller tiny pieces is usually the best bet. By dividing a job into very small pieces, you’re allowing the crowd to be more engaged and the tasks to be done very much more quickly and rapidly. This is Microtasking.

Microtasking allows the ability of the human intellect to shine where most computers fail. Cognitive abilities such as judgement in assessing pooled collection of data like reading materials or websites; assessment of art, pictures, videos and handwritten documents; or even retrieval of data from the physical world are things which a crowd can do more efficiently than a computer.

Splitting a job into smaller tasks via microtasking

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mTurk) is an example of a microtasking platform and the most widely used of its kind. But issues such as workers not compensated for the true value of their tasks and not being able to have any means of communication with employers have dogged mTurk. Crowdworkers have been said to be one of the most exploited workforces with payment evasion and the likes¹

“I am a human being, not an algorithm, and yet [employers] seem to think I am there just to serve their bidding,” writes Milland in her letter to Bezos²

Abuse and failure of trust. All the hallmarks of centralization.

Gems ready to be mined

Enter Gems

Gems is a decentralized protocol for contracting intellectual workers to perform microtasks. By using the Gems, issues such as task verification, trust, or payments are remedied by the advantage of trustless decentralization. Gems ensures and enforces the behavior of all participants, instead of being regulated by a single centralized operator.

Decentralization inverts the pyramid by incentivizing the users of the Gems Network rather than a central figure. Decentralization will encourage a responsibilty-driven working culture within the community without an authoritative entity. Economic incentives are ensured in a positive manner between employers and workers. Work and its decision-making related processes are geared towards excellent contribution within a framework of proper coordination.

Intermediaries are removed. Accuracy of results are verified. With focus on the users of the network and the assurance of incentives along with a system which motivates crowdworkers, exceptional work are the results of a given task. That is the beauty of decentralization. And that is what Gems is trying to achieve.

Learn more about Gems at:

References

¹ https://www.thenation.com/article/how-crowdworkers-became-ghosts- digital-machine

² https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/03/amazon-mechanical-turk-workers-protest-jeff-bezos