The Captcha Paradox

https://talkingrobot.com/2025/05/the-captcha-paradox/

by cfievet • 1 year ago

13 8 1 year ago

we may see captchas blocking humans

That article comes at the same time I am blocked by PayPal's stupid captcha because I don't have a "web GPU" (whatever that shit is) in my browsers (even on Chromium) despite having 2FA enabled. A good reminder that I should stop using PayPal for my subscriptions and donations.

In addition to that, we have web sites broken because they don't implement properly the CloudFlare protection and give me 403 or 500 errors. We really need a new web.

creatonez• 1 year ago

WebGPU requires Vulkan or a Vulkan-like API to be present and not blacklisted. I wonder if they are fingerprinting the nuances of your system's Vulkan implementation? Not sure why WebGL based fingerprinting wouldn't be enough for this -- maybe because folks wishing to get around the fingerprinting have already made deterministic OpenGL renderers.

johnisgood2• 1 year ago

I do not think my system and/or hardware supports Vulkan, but I never had issues with PayPal's invisible CAPTCHA (is it invisible or I just never see it?).

Disposal84333• 1 year ago

After some tweaking it was definitely the fingerprinting that got me. I don't know why we still have this after the push of the industry for 2FA and Passkeys.

palmotea• 1 year ago

That article comes at the same time I am blocked by PayPal's stupid captcha because I don't have a "web GPU" (whatever that shit is) in my browsers (even on Chromium) despite having 2FA enabled.

That's fun. I have a coworker who had to disable that on his laptop, because ads were crashing his machine.

Yeah, it's a hardware problem and he should get a new one, but that's a lot of trouble (and may not be feasible for someone who bought their own machine).

Michelangelo11• 1 year ago

Need to renew a passport? Your AI assistant can handle it. Want to resolve a billing dispute? Your bot speaks the call center’s language better than you ever could. These systems aren’t speculative—they’re already outperforming the humans they represent in key tasks.

This is all true, but I'm disappointed that TFA doesn't address the implication -- namely, the massive job destruction. Routine service jobs like those described employ probably tens of millions worldwide and are a stepping stone into the middle class, and I think AI razing them wholesale is a tragedy.

In general, the impact of AI at the societal level looks like a force to return us to what most societies everywhere have been like: a small layer of owners at the top, a vast block of interchangeable unskilled laborers at the bottom, and an (ever-shrinking) sliver of clerks and skilled laborers sandwiched between. Broad middle classes, created by the Industrial Revolution, then end up as a blip in the overall course of history. That outcome would be one of the most destructive things I can imagine.

The Captcha Paradox

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