KAMI: Leveraging the power of crowd-sourcing to solve complex, real-world problems

Abstract

Many of the complex problems facing the world today have been formally classified as what computational theorists call NP-complete problems, meaning problems for which no known algorithm exists for optimally solving the problem in a tractable time frame. On the other hand, humans often demonstrate a unique adeptness at being able to solve NP-complete problems. In this paper, we propose using the popular flood fill game KAMI as a crowd-sourced platform for representing arbitrary NP-Complete problems to human users. More than simply a game of problem-solving or strategy, KAMI derives its success from the fact that each puzzle is an artistic artifact whose popularity depends as much on the creative rendering of the problem as much as the challenge or intrigue of the problem itself. We discuss how the principles of computational creativity represent the key to representing NP-complete problems in this medium so as to be able to effectively harness the power of human problem-solving via crowd-sourcing methods.