Amazon will stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk

(techcrunch.com)

109 points | by bookofjoe 5 hours ago ago

35 comments

  • jordemort 3 minutes ago ago

    I turked for a bit trying to make some extra cash leading up to my wedding, but it was a very time-inefficient way to make money. I think I managed to wring 10 or 20 bucks out of it tops after plugging at it for a month.

  • CodesInChaos 3 hours ago ago

    > In a snake-eating-its-own-tail irony, a 2023 analysis found that between 33% and 46% of workers on the platform were using large language models to complete their tasks,

    I assume AI use by workers has risen to the point where it renders Mechanical Turk pointless.

    • 6510 12 minutes ago ago

      I don't see why I would care how they do the job. Just do the job, I have other things to do.

    • skt5 an hour ago ago

      This likely means those consuming the outputs of Mechanical Turk don't have a good way to measure the value (aka quality) of the outputs.

      If they did - then they shouldn't care whether it's a human or a LLM. And if it's a LLM - then the cost will roughly correlate to the MIN(cost of the LLM, cost of a human) to do the task.

      • AndrewOMartin 35 minutes ago ago

        I think the "state of the art" of measuring the quality of outputs was to send the same task to multiple "agents" and only accept answers if over a certain amount agree. With some human review and reputation scoring sprinkled on top. It was a while since I was in this field though

    • moralestapia 3 hours ago ago

      Yeah, I was doing this kind of Artificial Artificial Artificial Intelligence back in 2012 to make some extra $$$. Glad they finally "patched" that hole ^^.

      • pc86 3 hours ago ago

        You were using LLMs in 2012?

        • subarctic an hour ago ago

          Artificial AI = stuff like mechanical turk where they get humans to do stuff computers can't do and make it look like it's "AI"

          Artificial Artificial Intelligence = using computers to do mechanical turk jobs

          • moralestapia an hour ago ago

            You wrote the same thing twice, hehe.

            But the point gets across.

            • icepush 2 minutes ago ago

              Artificial Artificial Artificial intelligence is when the chat bot is out of capacity, so a person in India is writing the response that gets returned by the LLM which gets pasted into Mechanical Turk.

        • simlevesque 2 hours ago ago

          They were faking artificial intelligence by using real individuals.

        • pixel_popping 2 hours ago ago

          Fiverr-5.5 was the leading model back then.

        • moralestapia 2 hours ago ago

          Not LLMs. (Useful) LLMs came to the market around 2022.

  • sampton 2 minutes ago ago

    Pour one out for the original A.I. (Actual Indians).

  • nullsmack 4 hours ago ago

    I had no idea this was still around.

    It helped me buy a Battlefield 2 "Special Forces" expansion pack back in the day.

    Well, I could've bought it either way but buying it didn't impact my normal income because I did Mechanical Turk in my free time enough to get it.

  • root-parent 2 hours ago ago

    I can see a high value startup, that will provide Human Intelligence with real Humans, locked in the room, with no network, books, LLMs and monitored 24x7 with cameras.

    • HoldOnAMinute an hour ago ago

      Please enjoy each task equally

    • mcmcmc 43 minutes ago ago

      24/7 isolation with no stimulation outside of work? Wonder if the hallucination rate would be higher or lower

      • morkalork a minute ago ago

        Just give them some exercise bikes to pedal to keep them physically occupied

  • obblekk 2 hours ago ago

    Maybe the most unambiguous "ai will automate work" example I've seen yet.

    Absolutely does not imply the workers are automated since they can now use the current models to do more complex tasks at the vast number of new AI training data startups.

    Turk was simply not designed for greater complexity tasks and so much of their lunch has been eaten by startups specifically built to collect AI training data.

  • leohonexus 2 hours ago ago

    Where do I find participants for my user studies then?

  • josefritzishere 4 hours ago ago

    It's a shame. Mechanical Turk works better than any AI.

    • xandrius 4 hours ago ago

      It's still AI, just a different type.

      • CodesInChaos 3 hours ago ago

        The Actually Indian kind?

        • testuser1984 28 minutes ago ago

          American Idiot kind

        • mghackerlady 3 hours ago ago

          Hey, maybe they're Indonesian!

          • pwython 3 hours ago ago

            I thought they were Turkish.

          • expedition32 an hour ago ago

            Ever been to Singapore? Their apartments have a room for a Indonesian maid.

            Never underestimate just how cheap human life is!

        • shshsjsj an hour ago ago

          mild racism, needs to be reported

          • aswegs8 an hour ago ago

            It's a joke

          • Faaak an hour ago ago

            you can call the police

          • HoldOnAMinute an hour ago ago

            India is not a race, therefore this is not racist.

    • brokensegue 2 hours ago ago

      personally, i've never had good luck with MT's quality.

  • baggachipz 3 hours ago ago

    They moved all the Mechanical Turk workers over to robot and autotaxi piloting.

    • teddyh 2 hours ago ago

      And monitoring of “cashier-free” grocery stores.