These HITs are typically things that computers and algorithms can’t quite handle yet - everything from psychological surveys to the identification of NSFW images.Ī large percentage of the requesters who post these tasks are academic researchers with limited budgets, and tech companies looking to compile human-cultured data that can be fed to AI algorithms. Launched in 2005, MTurk is a platform where “requesters” post mind-numbingly boring jobs called “Human Intelligence Tasks” (HITs) that workers can complete for very small sums of cash. But like its namesake, it renders the human labor that underlies AI invisible. In fact, it’s not a physical machine at all. Today, Amazon runs its own iteration of this concept, dubbed Mechanical Turk (MTurk for short). An 18th-century diagram of The Turk, an unbeatable chess-playing “machine” that later turned out to be operated by a human who hid inside of it (Wikipedia) The Turk was hailed as a great feat of artificial intelligence - until, of course, it was revealed that it was no machine at all, but a mechanical puppet controlled by a human chess master who hid in a box under the board. In the 18th century, an unbeatable chess-playing “machine” called The Turk toured Europe, infamously defeating the likes of Ben Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. Today, he is one of a reported 500k workers on Mechanical Turk who collectively complete millions of tasks each month.īut how much can a person really earn completing mindless tasks for pennies on the dollar? Is this a viable way to make a part-time income? What the heck is Mechanical Turk? Though these tasks paid as little as $0.01, Naab saw their additive potential. The platform, run by Amazon, offered anyone the opportunity to earn money by completing quick, menial tasks posted by researchers: Labelling images, taking surveys, transcribing receipts. Nor did selling knick-knacks on eBay, or posting up on the corner in a lemonade stand. He browsed the usual “ 5 Easy Ways To Make $$$ From Home” listicles, but came up empty. But he had a baby girl on the way, and the impending vortex of expenses - clothing, childcare, hospital bills, truckloads of diapers - threatened to push him into financial peril. In early 2013, Mike Naab found himself in dire need of a side gig.Īs a full-time senior business analyst, the Pennsylvanian made a decent living.
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