crowdsource
What It Means
Crowdsourcing means getting a large group of people, usually online, to voluntarily help with a task or project that your organization needs done. Instead of hiring employees or contractors, you put out an open call for anyone interested to contribute their time, skills, or knowledge.
Why Chief AI Officers Care
CAIOs often use crowdsourcing to gather training data for AI models, like having people label images or transcribe audio, which can be much cheaper than professional data annotation services. However, crowdsourced data quality can be inconsistent and may introduce bias, requiring careful validation processes. There are also potential intellectual property and data privacy risks when working with unknown contributors.
Real-World Example
A CAIO at a retail company needs thousands of product images labeled for an AI vision system that identifies clothing items. Instead of paying a professional labeling service $50,000, they post the task on Amazon Mechanical Turk where hundreds of workers label images for a few cents each, completing the project for $5,000 in two weeks.
Common Confusion
People often confuse crowdsourcing with outsourcing - the key difference is that crowdsourcing uses an open call to many voluntary participants, while outsourcing contracts specific work to particular companies or individuals.
Industry-Specific Applications
See how this term applies to healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, tech, and insurance.
Healthcare: In healthcare, crowdsourcing involves engaging patients, clinicians, or researchers to contribute data, expertise, or so...
Finance: In finance, crowdsourcing is commonly used for investment research, fraud detection, and regulatory compliance through p...
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- 6 industry-specific applications
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- Real compliance scenarios
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Technical Definitions
NISTNational Institute of Standards and Technology
"a type of participative online activity in which an individual, an institution, a non-profit organization, or company proposes to a group of individuals of varying knowledge, heterogeneity, and number, via a flexible open call, the voluntary undertaking of a task. "Source: Enrique
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