Amazon's Mechanical Turk

rscoggin writes "Amazon.com has a new program that wants you to 'Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it.' (example: 'Is there a pizza parlour in this photograph?'). For each task you complete you get a small payment, usually ranging from a few cents to a little under a dollar. It's named the Amazon Mechanical Turk after a famous hoax from the 19th century. Kill time and get paid in tiny increments to boot!" Similar to Google Answers, there seems to be a reliability ratings system and some incentives.

Great...

[TubeSteak]

Great... Another way for /.'ers to waste time at work.
GOOD JOB AMAZON

Micropayment mercenary

[mrseigen]

This could get addictive.

i can see it already...

[Anonymous Coward]

- can you see boobs in the picture ?
- Is there a donkey in the picture ?
- Can you see the can of whipped cream ?
- is there chocolate paint involved..

Advanced indexing of Pr0n, humanity is moving forward, no doubt.

3 cents for 1 hours work?

[mustafap]

Wow, I can give up my day job!

How long until some sick slashdotter posts the ...

[Anonymous Coward]

following HIT: "Is there a goat in that picture?"

Re:This could be brilliant.

[Breakfast Pants]

Even better would be if there were pictures of people enjoying pepsi with the same question and answer as you gave and then they also had ugly people drinking coke and cringing, etc. with the same question, but new answer, "coke."

Re:Great...

[phase_9]

News just in, people getting paid to look at webpages they're not meant to at work! In unrelated news, slashdot hits drop off...

Japanese manuals?

[Crouty]

Wow, I can't wait to unleash my grammar nazi skills on the automated translations of japanese manuals of electronic devices!

Keep them coming, Amazon!

As McEnroe said, "You can not be serious"...

[DataCannibal]

or as we used to say in the UK, "Pull the other one, it's get bells on"

Or as I say today, "40 cents for a product description!?!?! Fuck off!"

Agent Smith, is that you?

[OldManAndTheC++]

I hope you all can see where this is going:

• 2005: Amazon introduces Mechanical Turk program. Thousands of underpaid geeks sign up and start clicking mindlessly.
• 2010: Home catheterization and feeding tube kit eliminates need to leave workstation. Productivity skyrockets.
• 2015: Direct neural interface improves response times one million-fold.
• 2020: The Matrix

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Elbonia

[HermanAB]

Well, that is probably a whole month's average income for someone in Elbonia...

I think I get it...

[93 Escort Wagon]

... basically it's just like a sneaker factory in Vietnam, but with a cool-sounding name.

How to avoid paying out:

[wampus]

Make the site dog ass slow so you can ID 3 photos in 10 minutes. I'm up to 9 cents! I guess I should get back to coding, since thats what the OTHER people are paying me to do right now...

Re:Doesn't pay enough

[Anne_Nonymous]

It's not about the money; it's about fucking with Amazon, by giving hilariously incorrect answers.

We slashdotted Amazon?

[Dachannien]

Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers.

I wonder if serving web pages counts as such a task. Because their computers sure are doing a crappy job of it at the moment.

Slahdot should use this..

[objekt]

..they could ask us questions like "Is this a dupe?"

Re:So this is going mainstream now...

[kryten_nl]

I've revised your business model:

1. Volunteer at an orphanage in China.

A new kid-powered architecture!

[Resseguie]

Would that qualify as a beowolf cluster of children?

Or maybe this would require a new "Grid Kid" architecture with an advanced resource broker to farm out the questions based on difficulty and school grade level.

Re:Philip K. Dick

[drudd]

I think you should have charged $0.03 for that information.

Doug

Re:Good to know

[Anonymous Coward]

It is good to know that we humans are still not obsolete, even though we have been relegated to the menial jobs...

It looks like you're trying to post to Slashdot!

Do you want to:

a) make the grammatical correction above;
b) go back to flipping hamburgers; or
c) commence robot-smashing?

-Clippy

Re:Doesn't pay enough

[webview]

There are definitely parts of the world where that would be a fantastic income, but my home country isn't one of them.

Yes, and I am sure they all have Amazon.com accounts with credit-cards hooked up to them.

Re:CAPTCHAs

[glinden]

The whole motivation from this came from the same person who invented the CAPTCHA, and was explained in his thesis defense on Wednesday.

When you say this thesis was the motivation for Amazon Mechanical Turk, what exactly do you mean? Luis von Ahn isn't at Amazon, is he?