Named after “first real sweatshop” – computer playing chess (actually midget crammed in box)
The Mechanical Turk was a fake chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854, it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was explained in the early 1820s as an elaborate hoax.[1]The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the machine. With a skilled operator, the Turk won most of the games played during its demonstrations around Europe and the Americas for nearly 84 years, playing and defeating many challengers including statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. Although many had suspected the hidden human operator, the hoax was initially revealed only in the 1820s.
The Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing marketplace that enables computer programs to co-ordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks which computers are unable to do. Requesters, the human beings that write these programs, are able to pose tasks known as HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), such as choosing the best among several photographs of a storefront, writing product descriptions, or identifying performers on music CDs. WorkersorProviders can then browse among existing tasks and complete them for a monetary payment set by the Requester.
Requesters can ask that Workers fulfill Qualifications before engaging a task, and they can set up a test in order to verify the Qualification. They can also accept or reject the result sent by the Worker, which reflects on the Worker's reputation. Currently, a Requester has to have a U.S. address, but Workers can be anywhere in the world. Payments for completing tasks can be redeemed on Amazon.com via gift certificate or be later transferred to a Worker's U.S. bank account. Requesters, which are typically corporations, pay 10 percent over the price of successfully completed HITs (or more for extremely cheap HITs) to Amazon.[1]
Because HITs are typically simple, repetitive tasks and users are paid often only a few cents to complete them, some have criticized Mechanical Turk as a "virtual sweatshop."[6] Because workers are paid as contractors rather than employees, requesters do not have to file forms for, nor to pay, payroll taxes, and they avoid laws regarding minimum wage, overtime, and workers compensation. Workers, though, must report their income as self-employment income. Also, Amazon does not monitor the service and refers all complaints to the poster of the HIT. This hands-off approach can be seen as a prime cause of the actions evident in many of the complaints above.Some HITs include pumping hits to Digg or Reddit for example to up someone’s hits or to add Twitter followers for instance.Hypothetically, you may end up supporting something you’re wholly against. Iranian government may ask you to look through a set of photos to find insurgents.
