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• Knowing Luis von Ahn: the Guatemalan inventor of Captcha and DuoLingo

Biographies   11 Nov, 2019   news.eBitcoinics.com   Views: 714

Some minds are simply born to stand out. However, many times what happens in its first years of life becomes decisive when it comes to setting the course of what will be its future trajectory.

Sometimes, it might even seem that things were meant to happen. This could be the case of Luis von Ahn's first foray into the world of technology and application design.

This was the first years of Luis von Ahn

The Guatemalan was born on August 19, 1978, in Guatemala City. From an early age, what he most wanted his family to give him was a Nintendo console.

However, his mother - almost as if he already knew the immense potential of the then child von Ahn - chose to give him his first computer at a very young age. Thanks to this first contact with technology, Luis discovered his passion for this world and for creating applications.

In fact, at 12 he had already designed his first functional application. Although this did not gain any kind of notoriety, he made it clear that this boy had much to give the world. He attended secondary school at the American College of Guatemala and 17 years of age, he was already on his way to the United States to continue his university education.

To begin with, he studied mathematics at Duke University where he earned his first degree in 2000. Then, he moved to Carnegie Mellon University where he dedicated his doctorate in Computer Science.

There, he found himself under the tutelage of one of the institution's most renowned teachers: Manuel Blum. After all, this has been the mentor of many prominent personalities in the world of technology.

Here is when Captcha is born

Already by the year 2000, von Ahn was not only receiving his first university degree. He had also been able to develop a new technology that would change the way we interact with the internet.

That same year, Yahoo started using it on its platforms to have a method with which to determine if whoever was on the other side of the screen was a real person or a bot. The name that this invention received was Captcha and, thanks to him, nation in the world a new concept known as "human computing". With it, the pages had a novel and effective way to avoid the intrusion of machines in their systems.

Although it was a highly efficient system in his work, the truth is Luis von Ahn was not completely happy with it. Since it caused millions of people a day to lose time of their lives in a job that would have no benefit other than letting them enter the portal of their choice.

This is how ReCaptcha appeared

To combat this tendency to waste valuable time that his creation had generated, he had the idea of ??reinventing himself. With this in mind, he developed an idea that would allow him to keep the useful Captchas for the web and, besides, make them have a true contribution to the improvement of society.

What he implemented to achieve the latter was as ingenious as it was original. He titled his new initiative ReCaptcha and made it a complement to the first. Thanks to this, people - instead of being shown random letters and words to decipher - are now presented with fragments of old books that need to be digitized but which, due to their age and the deterioration of the pages, have words that cannot be recognized by the machines.

Thus, aware of it or not, millions of people in the world gradually contribute to the process of transcribing books. As a consequence, this has a very positive effect on the number of books that can be transferred annually to the digital format. This, in the end, allows, little by little, more and more knowledge to be saved from disappearing in the pages of an old book attacked by the passage of time.

After von Ahn made this whole journey of consciousness and noticed that he could direct his efforts to social causes, a new opportunity arrived at his doors. In 2009, Google noticed the potential of Captcha and ReCaptcha, so it made a million-dollar deal with von Ahn for the rights of these creations.

Von Ahn is a pioneer in the world of human computing

This, as the name suggests, is a way of conceiving the interaction between human and artificial processes. Within human computing, both coexist in a kind of symbiosis that allows them to coexist and work in teams.

Generally, this occurs when an artificial process uses human intervention - with micro-tasks - to reach an end. The grace of this lies in the fact that, generally, the cases in which plurality is required that give such different processes as human and artificial reasoning, are situations that - being treated only by one of the two - would become too cumbersome - and sometimes they don't even get solvable.

With his creation, Luis von Ahn completely changed the world of the web and also how we interact with him. This was because he conceived, within the concept of human computing, this practical application that allowed him to use it on a daily and systematic basis.

Duolingo is coming!

With Captcha and ReCaptcha von Ahn he had not only already made his contribution to the world, but he had also obtained the sum of money necessary to be able to retire at his short 29 years. However, inactivity is not the style of this Guatemalan mathematician.

Therefore, he turned his interest in education and how to improve it, particularly in the area of ??language learning. To help the world connect and communicate better, he created the most popular language teaching app in the world: Duolingo.

Its creation was given to provide the masses with a free possibility to learn other languages. To date, the platform already covers more than 80 different languages ??and has managed to raise more than $ 10 million in the capital - an amount that now looks surprising since, initially, the app was not getting the profits it required.

With Duolingo, von Ahn reapplied his ReCaptcha method. But, this time, people do not transcribe old texts but translate the internet. Within the app, those who practice the different levels must translate several phrases and words that, if correctly placed, will be uploaded to the web, which will gradually contribute to the fact that more and more Internet pages are truly available in all the languages ??and not only in a few.

What does Luis von Ahn do today?

In addition to his clear entrepreneurial side, Luis von Ahn also has an academic side that cannot be overlooked. Therefore, to keep his mind active he continues to drive in the bustling environment of ideas that takes place in his second house of university studies Carnegie Mellon.

Within it, classes in the area of ??Computer Science, specifically in a chair known as the science of the web. Within it, von Ahn has applied different mechanisms that have made him more recognized in the world of education both for its innovation but for its enviable pedagogy.

Despite continuing with the Duolingo project, von Ahn has repeatedly admitted that he keeps his mind active by committing to other small and slightly less noticeable projects - or well, so far less noticeable, perhaps some of these new activities of a surprise in the future as their new initiatives have done.

And now that?

Luis is clear about his north and - since he has left Captcha and ReCaptcha completely in the hands of Google - he is clear about his commitment to the growth of Duolingo. To date, the app is valued at about 700 million dollars and is getting closer to reaching one billion of these - a fact that would make it a unicorn venture, as they call it in the market.

However, he is still in the early stages, so he needs work, for this, von Ahn has set three goals for his company in the future. Unquestionably, the first is to become sustainable over time; the second, make teaching more effective and the third, expand their horizons by including more content on their platform that translates into a much more complete experience for users.

With such a creative mind and an entrepreneurial personality as von Ahn's, we are likely to hear from him again soon. Now, what will be the next news that will place him in the centre of the public eye, is a question that only he will be able to answer in due time.

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