Amazon's Mechanical Turk 375
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.
Re:CAPTCHAs (Score:5, Informative)
Subject: Thesis Oral - Luis von Ahn
November 2, 2005
Luis von Ahn
12:00 PM, 3305 Newell-Simon Hall
Thesis Oral
Title: Human Computation
Abstract:
Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to
challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This thesis
introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve
problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to
solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel
approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games.
For example, the ESP Game, introduced in this thesis, is an enjoyable
online game -- many people play over 40 hours a week -- and when people
play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These
keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image
search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because
they enjoy it.
I introduce three other examples of games with a purpose: Peekaboom,
which helps determine the location of objects in images, Phetch, which
collects paragraph descriptions of arbitrary images to help
accessibility of the Web, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense
knowledge. I also show that, in principle, every problem that could be
solved by a computer, today or in the future, could be solved using
enjoyable computer games.
In addition, I introduce CAPTCHAs, automated tests that humans can pass
but computer programs cannot. CAPTCHAs take advantage of human
processing power in order to differentiate humans from computers, an
ability that has important applications in practice.
The results of this thesis are currently in use by hundreds of Web sites
and companies around the world, and some of the games presented here
have been played by over 100,000 people. Practical applications of this
work include improvements in problems such as: image search,
adult-content filtering, spam, common-sense reasoning, computer vision,
accessibility, and security in general.
Thesis Committee:
Manuel Blum, Chair
Takeo Kanade
Michael Reiter
Josh Benaloh, Microsoft Research
Jitendra Malik, University of California, Berkeley
So this is going mainstream now... (Score:5, Informative)
According to this earlier Slashdot report [slashdot.org], the spam industry has been doing this for awhile with free porn.
I'm curious to know if Amazon is going to use the cumulative results to try to "train" computers, or if it really is just for the money. The requirements include being over 18, so you can't pimp your kids to click through this stuff for cash (though I'm sure it will happen).
Re:Sounds interesting but.... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, mturk.amazon.com [amazon.com] redirects you to www.mturk.com [mturk.com]... seems to imply something.
Re:$/hr (Score:5, Informative)
There is an API, maybe if someone made a page that just displays the images and sends in the result when you click on the image instead of having to click twice for each HIT, you could go faster and make much more money.
Re:Sounds interesting but.... (Score:5, Informative)
The whois info looks a bit dodgy. I would have expected Amazon knew how to properly register domains...
Registrant:
MTAI, Inc.
P.O. Box 80626
Seattle, Washington 98108
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: MTURK.COM
Created on: 22-Oct-01
Expires on: 22-Oct-06
Last Updated on: 11-Oct-05
Administrative Contact:
Hostmaster, MTAI mechturk1@hotmail.com
MTAI, Inc.
P.O. Box 80626
Seattle, Washington 98108
United States
2065794562 Fax --
Technical Contact:
Hostmaster, MTAI mechturk1@hotmail.com
MTAI, Inc.
P.O. Box 80626
Seattle, Washington 98108
United States
2065794562 Fax --
Do A9's Dirty Work For Them (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sounds interesting but.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sounds interesting but.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sounds interesting but.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Highly suspectful site. Do NOT give any detail (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Highly suspectful site. Do NOT give any detail (Score:4, Informative)
Anyhow, I tried it. It recognised me and new my address. It's Amazon alright.
Re:Highly suspectful site. Do NOT give any detail (Score:3, Informative)
The link ultimately goes to:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/104-7108086-
Which has links back to www.mturk.com
Looks legitimate, unless someone has really managed to pull one over on Amazon (and if so, why put it on its own domain?)
Re:Sounds interesting but.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Philip K. Dick (Score:1, Informative)
It's legit (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Philip K. Dick (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about federal labor laws? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Doesn't pay enough (Score:4, Informative)
So basically, if it takes you 5 minutes to write a brief product description, and you churn through them all day, you're making $7.80, which is better than minimum wage. Not a good proprosition if you're clueless about auto parts and have to research everything as described, but I don't think that's the intended optimal target for completing the task (although it someone's dumb enough to spend half an hour or more per description for a crappy hourly wage, they're more than welcome). The optimal target to take up that task is someone who already knows a lot about car parts. Chances are if you're an Autozone (auto parts store chain) employee, you could get most of the descriptions done in under 5 minutes with little to no side research, because you already have the domain-specific knowledge. That's the guy who will be drawn to answer that question.
So the key to making effective money at this scheme is to skip tasks that you don't think you're "better than average" at - kinda like the job marketplace in real life.
Legit site. Ignore idiots. (Score:3, Informative)
To verify the legitimacy of the site, manually type "amazon.com" into your browser's location bar, and hover over the "See all 32 Product Categories" tab. When it pops up the list, click "Web Services" and read the first item listed on that page, which is a press release announcing Amazon Mechanical Turk.
For extra points, do this only a machine which has been booted from a liveCD with DNS utilities and hosts file that you have personally audited.
Or just, you know, look at the fact that the Turk will, by default, display the name and address you've given to Amazon as your contact info, and conclude that yeah, it's an Amazon property.
Re:Highly suspectful site. Do NOT give any detail (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know what the deal is with the dodgy looking registration but
that doesn't all look like part of a phishing site to me.
Re:Sounds interesting but.... (Score:4, Informative)
But in case this is some kind of phishing, they at least manipulated some reverse
records too
traceroute to www.mturk.com (207.171.166.182), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
[...]
11 amazon-above.mpr1.iad5.us.mfnx.net.175.185.208.in
12 72.21.201.27 97.109 ms 97.347 ms 98.164 ms
13 166-182.amazon.com (207.171.166.182) 98.107 ms 97.069 ms 97.510 ms
Re:Doesn't pay enough (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sounds interesting but.... (Score:3, Informative)
whois 207.171.166.182
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[whois.arin.net]
OrgName: Amazon.com, Inc.
OrgID: AMAZON-4
Address: 605 5th Ave S
City: SEATTLE
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98104
Country: US
NetRange: 207.171.160.0 - 207.171.191.255
CIDR: 207.171.160.0/19
NetName: AMAZON-01
NetHandle: NET-207-171-160-0-1
Parent: NET-207-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS-1.AMAZON.COM
NameServer: NS-2.AMAZON.COM
NameServer: NS-3.AMAZON.COM
NameServer: AUTH00.NS.UU.NET
Comment:
RegDate: 1999-09-23
Updated: 2002-03-19
RTechHandle: AC6-ORG-ARIN
RTechName: Amazon.com, Inc.
RTechPhone: +1-206-266-2187
RTechEmail: NOC@amazon.com
OrgTechHandle: ROLEA19-ARIN
OrgTechName: Role Account
OrgTechPhone: +1-206-266-2187
OrgTechEmail: noc@amazon.com
Message from Amazon Mechanical Turk Team (Score:5, Informative)
Collaborative Human Interpreter (CHI) (Score:3, Informative)
The idea is to harness this kind of thing to develop software for the global brain. [communitywiki.org]
Re:This could be brilliant. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Message from Amazon Mechanical Turk Team (Score:2, Informative)
Put it this way, we didn't expect for it to become so popular so quickly. I'm sure enough boxes were allocated for the expected initial load, but then someone submitted it to Slashdot.org.
It's hard for anyone to take the load...
The Amazon.com mainsite could probably handle it, but Turk just rolled out, and we didn't expect the sudden hammering it recieved.