Something new in the world of robots asking whether I’m a robot.

Or at least something new to me. Previously I’ve tended to run into a challenge to click on buses or motorcycles or traffic lights or the like. Maybe those have been cracked by nefarious robots pretending to be people, and so we need cats to foil them.

Whatever the case, there was a reason for the CAPTCHA photos of objects you’d find driving.

“In 2012, Google started snippets of photos from Google Street View,” says the Grove Street Auto Repair Blog. “By 2014, the CAPTCHA system was primarily focused on training AI. Google has mentioned that by this time, they used CAPTCHA to teach self-driving cars, such as the new rideshare Waymo vehicles.”

I think I’d read about that before. It’s a steep learning curve for the robot cars, apparently.