Modeling with the Crowd: Optimizing the Human-Machine Partnership with
  Zooniverse
  LSST and Euclid must address the daunting challenge of analyzing the
unprecedented volumes of imaging and spectroscopic data that these
next-generation instruments will generate. A promising approach to overcoming
this challenge involves rapid, automatic image processing using appropriately
trained Deep Learning (DL) algorithms. However, reliable application of DL
requires large, accurately labeled samples of training data. Galaxy Zoo Express
(GZX) is a recent experiment that simulated using Bayesian inference to
dynamically aggregate binary responses provided by citizen scientists via the
Zooniverse crowd-sourcing platform in real time. The GZX approach enables
collaboration between human and machine classifiers and provides rapidly
generated, reliably labeled datasets, thereby enabling online training of
accurate machine classifiers. We present selected results from GZX and show how
the Bayesian aggregation engine it uses can be extended to efficiently provide
object-localization and bounding-box annotations of two-dimensional data with
quantified reliability. DL algorithms that are trained using these annotations
will facilitate numerous panchromatic data modeling tasks including
morphological classification and substructure detection in direct imaging, as
well as decontamination and emission line identification for slitless
spectroscopy. Effectively combining the speed of modern computational analyses
with the human capacity to extrapolate from few examples will be critical if
the potential of forthcoming large-scale surveys is to be realized.
