The reason this happens is that captchas are not localized. Most countries don't have mail boxes, only US, Canada, Australia, NZ have them so people from outside those countries may not think to distinguish mailboxes from parking meters and will just click every square that matches their mental model of a parking meter (a pole with something on top or a big box)

> Most countries don't have mail boxes (only US, Canada, Australia, NZ)

They do, they just look different. At least that's how it is in France.

They're not the same as the classic US mailbox (). In the US you can use such a mailbox to send mail as well. In Europe you typically have private letterboxes for incoming mail and big, public post boxes for sending.

> classic US mailbox ()

Missing link? In NZ, and presumably other countries, personal letterboxes in rural areas can be used to send too, which I'm guessing is the same as what you're referring to.

Yes NZ is one of the four countries that use this style of full duplex mailbox. It hasn't caught on outside US/CA/AU/NZ, probably because (speculating here) it's not secure against theft and doubles the workload for the mailman.

Darn, the parentheses originally contained a mailbox emoji but I forgot HN does not support them.

but that's not what the challenge is. it's more likely the database of training data is wrong. we've seen that to be very true from posts here on HN. some of the data was so horribly mis-identified, it's a wonder it works at all

Is a Bicycle a motorcycle? Will I kill one or the other by mis-categorizing it for the AI?

I mean, if we're just going to start saying "you know what I meant", then why use words that have meaning for anything?

Honestly, as a driver, when I see a bicycle, I make sure to provide as much room around them as possible. When I see a motorcycle from behind, I have no idea what the thought processes of the rider will be and just continue on in a straight line and allow them to make a decision. A bicycle in my rearview mirror poses no threat as they cannot keep up. A motorcycle can easily overtake in way ordinary cars cannot (between lanes, etc). They are much more difficult to predict. (not even taking into consideration the tendancy of motorcycle drivers being less risk averse).

So, if you want to teach the AI that a bicycle and a motorcycle are the same thing, then yes, you might inadvertantly lead to an AI making the wrong decision leading to a death. I wouldn't necessarily blame you for picking the wrong image in a captcha, but I'd definitely blame the devs for not sanitizing user input.

I think I got that exact same one, and had the exact same problem with it. Maybe reasoning that it was confusing the mailbox for a parking meter was how I proved that I was a human to it.