Gamers help in fight against AIDS

 

It is a long time before computers will be able to do everything we humans can do, and this item in tech blog Arstechnica that if you turn problem-solving into a challenging game like Foldit, there is no limit to what people will do for free. It's a pretty amazing article and worth reading all the way through, but I'll only paste in the summary:

What does the future hold for gaming-inspired citizen science? It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to picture gold-farmers converted to protein-folders. If scientific problems can be turned into something fun and easy-to-use (like Foldit), and offer Achievements or Trophies to show off, perhaps the legions of gamers could spend their free time a bit more productively, solving important scientific problems.

Hooray for "citizen science"!