I just finished reading an interesting news about Amazon’s new “Artificial Artificial Intelligence” – Mechanical Turk. Though TechCrunch says this is a sort of ” Matrix we are all plugged into a machine” event, I find it quite interesting :)
People are paid to do stuff. And developers can control such human-operated-tasks by using an API. (oh I love such straight phrases!)
When we think of interfaces between human beings and computers, we usually assume that the human being is the one requesting that a task be completed, and the computer is completing the task and providing the results. What if this process were reversed and a computer program could ask a human being to perform a task and return the results? What if it could coordinate many human beings to perform a task?
Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate Artificial Artificial Intelligence directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call – the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this Artificial Artificial Intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work.
Here’s a choice example of the type of thing you could do with the Turk:
Automotive Product Title and Feature Point Content
Your task is to edit an existing Automotive product title to make it more human readable and update and add additional feature points about the product. This HIT (ed: Human Intelligence Task) will require some research to complete. Approval depends on the quality of your title and feature points, determined by a manual review.
This is a GREAT idea. Amazon took the Google Answers service and tried to extend it. Nice stuff.
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