Amazon will stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk

(techcrunch.com)

90 points | by bookofjoe 4 hours ago ago

26 comments

  • CodesInChaos 2 hours 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.

    • skt5 32 minutes 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.

    • moralestapia 2 hours 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 2 hours ago

        You were using LLMs in 2012?

        • subarctic 27 minutes 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 19 minutes ago

            You wrote the same thing twice, hehe.

            But the point gets across.

        • simlevesque 2 hours ago

          They were faking artificial intelligence by using real individuals.

        • pixel_popping 2 hours ago

          Fiverr-5.5 was the leading model back then.

        • moralestapia an hour ago

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

  • root-parent an hour 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.

  • nullsmack 3 hours 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.

  • obblekk an hour 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 an hour ago

    Where do I find participants for my user studies then?

  • josefritzishere 3 hours ago

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

    • xandrius 3 hours ago

      It's still AI, just a different type.

      • CodesInChaos 3 hours ago

        The Actually Indian kind?

        • shshsjsj 24 minutes ago

          mild racism, needs to be reported

          • aswegs8 20 minutes ago

            It's a joke

          • Faaak 19 minutes ago

            you can call the police

          • HoldOnAMinute 16 minutes ago

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

        • mghackerlady 2 hours ago

          Hey, maybe they're Indonesian!

          • pwython 2 hours ago

            I thought they were Turkish.

    • brokensegue an hour ago

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

  • baggachipz 2 hours ago

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

    • teddyh 2 hours ago

      And monitoring of “cashier-free” grocery stores.