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.

CAPTCHAs

[CableModemSniper]

Does this mean I can get paid for breaking CAPTCHAs?

$/hr

[MyLongNickName]

Anyone want to make an estimation of $/hr earned doing this? I'm at work, and don't have the balls to spend 20 minutes earning cash online ;)

Re:This could be brilliant.

[TubeSteak]

I think that qualifies as a business method. start filing those patent papers quick

Profit?

[DevolvingSpud]

Since this is all web-services driven, it seems to me you could create an interesting cycle with a simple program:

1) Use the API to find a HIT, and sign up to complete it.
2) Create a new HIT that basically asks someone to complete the first HIT,
      only for $0.01 less than the original HIT was offering.
3) Do this for every existing HIT.
4) Profit?

Re:Contracting work worth big bucks

[Daniel_Staal]

So, don't do it.

Most of the ones I saw were trivial tasks. Even the auto description was edit the auto description until it was human readable. Since they are trivial, people get bored doing them. The common solution has been to over-pay someone to do them, and have the pay offset their boredom. This interface provides a new idea: let people do them until they get bored, and pay them by the piece.

If your time is truly worth more, don't do them. But there are people who will find it an interesting diversion for a few minutes, and they get paid a bit for it. All in all, not a bad extension of the free market.

Philip K. Dick

[baxissimo]

The reminds me of the Philip K. Dick novel in which the main character thinks he lives an ordinary life, and who solves the daily puzzle in the newspaper every day for cheap entertainment. In reality, though, the whole town he lives in is a front, and the fun puzzles he's solving in the newspaper are actually cleverly disguised military strategy problems of some sort.

Quick -- someone patent that storyline and sue Amazon for infringement!

Highly suspectful site. Do NOT give any detail

[Ilgaz]

Guys, let me tell.

It's registered through Godaddy.com, one of the companies spammers/phishers love to use.

It has hotmail contact addresses in whois. Impossible for a company like Amazon

No clue of such thing on official Amazon press room
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060 &p=irol-news [corporate-ir.net]

So if it looks like,acts like,runs like (amazon gigantic server farm slashdotted?) a regular phishing site, it is. Even if it made to Slashdot. I'd say pull the story until Amazon comes up with an explanation. Before any harm done.

It could be even a more "elite" hack including subdomain/DNS hacking. I am a spamcop mail customer and I see amazing things everyday.

In risk of looking very funny if it is not anything above, happily posting it.

Sweatshop of the future?

[YoFadosa]

Are the 3rd world drones that will do this pulling themselves up by their bootstraps into the information age or is this some kind of futuristic Dickensian sweatshop where piecemeal work is paid at three cents a click?

automating this

[mboedick]

For the image ones, couldn't you create 5 bots each with a different account and each one picks a different image and one picks None of these? One of them would be approved and you'd get paid, right?

Also if they are having humans approve your image selection before you get paid, isn't that as much effort as you making your original choice?

Re:automating this

[Wonda]

"Also if they are having humans approve your image selection before you get paid, isn't that as much effort as you making your original choice?"

Not if they just send the same to 5 people, and pick the most popular result as correct, massive use of bots could give them some nasty surprises if they do that though!

Re:Nirut Test

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the "G" in the anagram of "Alan Turing"?

Employee or Lab Rat. . ?

[Fantastic Lad]

While this Amazon thing might be a genuine attempt to farm out real work to people for chump-change, with the site Slashdotted, I can only sit here and wonder. . .

It reminds me of a little semi-scam some company had going in my town a few years back. . .

"You are invited to participate in a screen test of a new television series!"

People would go down and be a test-audience for a television pilot, and then fill out a questionnaire at the end. People, loving their TV culture, were tickled pink to be asked to do this. --Heck, they were even paid something like $15 for their participation!

So, a buddy of mine went to see what it was all about. . .

Basically, some marketing research firm had acquired the rights to an old pilot which never made it to air. They played this for people, and also played a bunch of adverts during the commercial breaks. The questionnaire asked a few boring questions about the pilot, but it also asked a curiously high number of questions about the ad spots. Stuff like, "Which of the two detergent packages in the ad did you find more appealing? The Blue or the Red?"

--Obviously the whole contrivance was designed to test market, uh, marketing.

Either way, by friend was amazed that nobody else seemed to catch on, took his fifteen bucks, and left shaking his head.

-FL

Re:The Future of Surveillance

[benjamindees]

That's a good idea. I would actually pay for that.

Lets say I've got a herd of cows in a remote location. I setup a few webcams. I put tracking anklets on the cows. If a tracker shows a cow leaving the fenceline, or malfunctions, or is tampered with, the webcams come on. Some random person on the internet gets the task of "count the cows, identify any people". In fact, two people get that task, for redundancy. They can pan and zoom and get a bonus for finding trouble. The whole thing could be run by a security company. If there's somebody stealing my cows, the security company can call the cops.

That would be worth a reasonable monthly fee.

Re:What is your time worth?

[3-State Bit]

Are you worth $65,000 per year? Maybe you're worth more or you value your time more? In any case, at $65,000 per year, you make about $0.52 per minute.

Well, Google says $65000 per year = $0.123586182 per minute [google.com].

For people "worth" $65,000/year there are three cases:

1. You are on salary at a day-job ($65,000 / year, irrespective of what you're doing as long as you don't get fired - commute, come in one saturday to meet a deadline, read slashdot instead of working, slip out early, come in late, or come in early, work a little late, etc.) In this case when you're off work you're still making the $0.12 per minute, assuming you're not currently doing something that makes you lose your job or that must be considered part of your next job (to pay off later when you get a higher salary doing something different). When you decide (off work) at seven PM to close your other windows and do this shit for an hour, it's like trading an hour of your time for the appropriate-sized bill appearing on your floor. There's no loss, you're already "being paid" your annual salary. Plus maybe it's fun.
2. You are employed by the hour (the number of hours you actually put in is what comes to $65,000 / year, with the assumption you could take more hours if you wanted 'em. If you couldn't take more hours it's the same as case 1.). In this case we shouldn't just divide your minutely earning for the whole year, we should say that you make money when you're on the clock, and no money when you're off the clock. The question is, if your on-the-clock job is worth more than this shit, then why would you take an hour of this shit instead of just clocking one more hour? If you consider this shit work and not just relaxation or something, you probably wouldn't. You'd just put in one more hour at work.
3. You are unemployed. In this case your profession could very well be worth $65,000 / year, but you might not be seeing any of this because you are currently unemployed. Maybe you spend 8 hrs a day interviewing or job-searching (sometimes to include learning something, getting a certificate, etc). In this scenario I think someone is in the same case as 1 (salaried) if they have enough savings (or can take on enough debt) to reach their next job [let's say the signing bonus pays you back these invested days/weeks -- no matter how many hours you actually spent doing them] , and case 2 (hourly) if they don't have enough savings to reach their next job -- except that the hourly wage should be considered slightly negative (you spend something during your job hunt, but don't actually make anything).
   
   Why would someone invest work in a negative hourly wage? Because they don't know that they don't have enough savings / can't take on enough debt to reach their next job on that investment!

I think this is a nice way of showing the different cases someone could be in who is "worth $65,000/yr" (interestingly I think the first case works for a completely passive income too, like if you live off of interest. You're still salaried, you just never have to come in to work "in order not to get fired". If you invest time, however, in making sure you get that interest, then that's what coming into work consists of. (Or think of absentee landlords, who must "come into work" for their salary only very rarely if at all.)

I can very well imagine someone is "worth 65,000/yr" whose "job" consists of reading the Wall Street Journal in the morning and making sure they don't have to head for the hills (the $65,000 is from the interest on "very safe" bonds). The rest of their day is as in case 1.

Also, please think about case 3, because I could be wrong and maybe there is a better way to analyze this one.

Re:This could be brilliant.

[stienman]

Even better:

Question: What kind of pop/soda do you see in this picture:
First picture shows a party with several attractive men and women and [good soda].

Second picture shows a senior care hospice and one can of [bad soda] being shared between 5-6 individuals.

Third picture shows a couple in a fast car along a mountian pass, each holding [good soda].

Fourth picture shows a prison cafeteria with a badly maintained [bad soda] machine.

I can't wait for the next election. This kind of "advertising" could be much worse than the kind of adverts we see on TV and in newspapers.

-Adam