Hacker News

Amazon will stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk

114 points by bookofjoe 6 hours ago | 35 comments

> 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 2 hours 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 59 minutes 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 4 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 3 hours ago

You were using LLMs in 2012?

subarctic 2 hours 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 2 hours ago

You wrote the same thing twice, hehe.

But the point gets across.

icepush 25 minutes 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 3 hours ago

They were faking artificial intelligence by using real individuals.

pixel_popping 3 hours ago

Fiverr-5.5 was the leading model back then.

moralestapia 3 hours ago

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

6510 35 minutes ago

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

jordemort 27 minutes 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.

nullsmack 5 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.

root-parent 3 hours 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 2 hours ago

Please enjoy each task equally

mcmcmc 2 hours ago

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

morkalork 25 minutes ago

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

obblekk 3 hours 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 3 hours ago

Where do I find participants for my user studies then?

sampton 26 minutes ago

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

josefritzishere 5 hours ago

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

xandrius 5 hours ago

It's still AI, just a different type.

CodesInChaos 4 hours ago

The Actually Indian kind?

mghackerlady 4 hours ago

Hey, maybe they're Indonesian!

pwython 4 hours ago

I thought they were Turkish.

expedition32 2 hours ago

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

Never underestimate just how cheap human life is!

testuser1984 51 minutes ago

American Idiot kind

cindyllm 50 minutes ago

[dead]

shshsjsj 2 hours ago

mild racism, needs to be reported

aswegs8 2 hours ago

It's a joke

Faaak 2 hours ago

you can call the police

HoldOnAMinute 2 hours ago

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

brokensegue 3 hours ago

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

baggachipz 4 hours ago

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

teddyh 3 hours ago

And monitoring of “cashier-free” grocery stores.