R U a Robot?

I never thought I’d be eager to perform math. It was never my best subject in school.

Am I the only one who struggles with those infuriating new “Are you a robot?” tests?

IsThisFood
Does this look like food to you?

The old online security tests designed to determine whether or not you’re a human being had either a series of squiggly letters and numbers or a simple math problem, like 7+9=?

The newer tests present a series of nine thumbnail images with instructions such as “Mark all images of food.”

This sounds deceptively simple in theory. But there’s always one image that I have no idea what it is.

One recent “mark all food images” test had stuff like a hamburger, a piece of cake, a sunset, a monkey, and something that looked like a petri dish to me. I’m staring at the screen like an idiot, eyes squinted, trying to figure out if it’s a photo of something edible.

A “mark all beverages” test had both my husband and me trying to figure out if an image of stemmed glassware contained ice cream or a liquid, because clearly ice cream is not a beverage although it may be served in a beverage-style serving dish, as with parfait.

“It must be ice cream because it looks like it has nuts on top,” says hubby. “Is it nuts or is it fizz,” I said.

I think it’s nuts.

But no matter what I guess, it’s always wrong.

For crying out loud, why can’t they just ask me what 8+4 equals? Have robots gotten so smart that simple math can’t stump them? Or is the real purpose of these tests to weed out people who wear bifocals?!

3 Replies to “R U a Robot?”

  1. I’m with you on the food and beverage ones! I have to guess because the photos are so bad, so ambiguous. I usually guess right, which astonishes me, but I still hate them.

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