Slashdot Mirror
Amazon's Mechanical Turk
rscoggin writes "Amazon.com has a new program that wants you to 'Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it.' (example: 'Is there a pizza parlour in this photograph?'). For each task you complete you get a small payment, usually ranging from a few cents to a little under a dollar. It's named the Amazon Mechanical Turk after a famous hoax from the 19th century. Kill time and get paid in tiny increments to boot!" Similar to Google Answers, there seems to be a reliability ratings system and some incentives.
Actually, yes. The whole motivation from this came from the same person who invented the CAPTCHA, and was explained in his thesis defense on Wednesday. Abstract for those who care:
Subject: Thesis Oral - Luis von Ahn
November 2, 2005
Luis von Ahn
12:00 PM, 3305 Newell-Simon Hall
Thesis Oral
Title: Human Computation
Abstract:
Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to
challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This thesis
introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve
problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to
solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel
approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games.
For example, the ESP Game, introduced in this thesis, is an enjoyable
online game -- many people play over 40 hours a week -- and when people
play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These
keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image
search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because
they enjoy it.
I introduce three other examples of games with a purpose: Peekaboom,
which helps determine the location of objects in images, Phetch, which
collects paragraph descriptions of arbitrary images to help
accessibility of the Web, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense
knowledge. I also show that, in principle, every problem that could be
solved by a computer, today or in the future, could be solved using
enjoyable computer games.
In addition, I introduce CAPTCHAs, automated tests that humans can pass
but computer programs cannot. CAPTCHAs take advantage of human
processing power in order to differentiate humans from computers, an
ability that has important applications in practice.
The results of this thesis are currently in use by hundreds of Web sites
and companies around the world, and some of the games presented here
have been played by over 100,000 people. Practical applications of this
work include improvements in problems such as: image search,
adult-content filtering, spam, common-sense reasoning, computer vision,
accessibility, and security in general.
Thesis Committee:
Manuel Blum, Chair
Takeo Kanade
Michael Reiter
Josh Benaloh, Microsoft Research
Jitendra Malik, University of California, Berkeley
According to this earlier Slashdot report, the spam industry has been doing this for awhile with free porn.
I'm curious to know if Amazon is going to use the cumulative results to try to "train" computers, or if it really is just for the money. The requirements include being over 18, so you can't pimp your kids to click through this stuff for cash (though I'm sure it will happen).
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Well, mturk.amazon.com redirects you to www.mturk.com... seems to imply something.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
I did nine 3-cent HITs in about 5 or 6 minutes, so that's about 3.25/hour. The lag for me was in waiting for the images to download and clicking on the "Accept HIT" button repeatedly.
There is an API, maybe if someone made a page that just displays the images and sends in the result when you click on the image instead of having to click twice for each HIT, you could go faster and make much more money.
The whois info looks a bit dodgy. I would have expected Amazon knew how to properly register domains...
Registrant:
MTAI, Inc.
P.O. Box 80626
Seattle, Washington 98108
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: MTURK.COM
Created on: 22-Oct-01
Expires on: 22-Oct-06
Last Updated on: 11-Oct-05
Administrative Contact:
Hostmaster, MTAI mechturk1@hotmail.com
MTAI, Inc.
P.O. Box 80626
Seattle, Washington 98108
United States
2065794562 Fax --
Technical Contact:
Hostmaster, MTAI mechturk1@hotmail.com
MTAI, Inc.
P.O. Box 80626
Seattle, Washington 98108
United States
2065794562 Fax --
Acutally, all the tasks that I saw involved processing data for A9's block-level search and "tour". Seems like a clever, cheap way to organize the insane amount of data they have mapped for this project.
Amazon has a page on their site about MTurk
Every post I make begins with the assumption P=~P.
When you try to login, the login page is amazon's genuine page sitting on https://www.amazon.com./ You can verify for yourself but there's nothing phishy here (pun intended). I have to admit the whois record is not very enticing though.
It looks like it's legit: there's a write up and link about it on Amazon's developer site: http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=sc_fe_c_1 _3435361_1/104-2932488-4463107?_encoding=UTF8&node =15879911&no=3435361&me=A36L942TSJ2AJA
Either the phishers already have access to my account information under Amazon (including mailing address and the unique fake name I gave Amazon), or it's actually connected to Amazon's database.
Anyhow, I tried it. It recognised me and new my address. It's Amazon alright.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
"If you are a software developer and would like to learn more about using Amazon Mechanical Turk APIs, click here."
1 879910?node=15879911
The link ultimately goes to:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/104-7108086-
Which has links back to www.mturk.com
Looks legitimate, unless someone has really managed to pull one over on Amazon (and if so, why put it on its own domain?)
Once you click login it redirects you to the actual amazon.com domain to sign in. So when you type in your username and password you actually send that to amazon.com (of course I am assuming that there is no spoofing and other crazy things going on since the whole things seems fairly legitiamte).
"Luke, I am your node.parent();"
Time out of joint.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/104-1026772-4 777552?node=15879911
Time out of Joint
Contract work is not subject to minimum wage laws because it is not paid on an hourly basis. If you as a contractor feel that the pay is not substantial, you have the right not to sign.
For more information, click here.
So basically, if it takes you 5 minutes to write a brief product description, and you churn through them all day, you're making $7.80, which is better than minimum wage. Not a good proprosition if you're clueless about auto parts and have to research everything as described, but I don't think that's the intended optimal target for completing the task (although it someone's dumb enough to spend half an hour or more per description for a crappy hourly wage, they're more than welcome). The optimal target to take up that task is someone who already knows a lot about car parts. Chances are if you're an Autozone (auto parts store chain) employee, you could get most of the descriptions done in under 5 minutes with little to no side research, because you already have the domain-specific knowledge. That's the guy who will be drawn to answer that question.
So the key to making effective money at this scheme is to skip tasks that you don't think you're "better than average" at - kinda like the job marketplace in real life.
11*43+456^2
To verify the legitimacy of the site, manually type "amazon.com" into your browser's location bar, and hover over the "See all 32 Product Categories" tab. When it pops up the list, click "Web Services" and read the first item listed on that page, which is a press release announcing Amazon Mechanical Turk.
For extra points, do this only a machine which has been booted from a liveCD with DNS utilities and hosts file that you have personally audited.
Or just, you know, look at the fact that the Turk will, by default, display the name and address you've given to Amazon as your contact info, and conclude that yeah, it's an Amazon property.
Seems to be listed quite prominently and thoroughly at aws.amazon.com.
I don't know what the deal is with the dodgy looking registration but
that doesn't all look like part of a phishing site to me.
Agreed: whois looks pretty odd. Amazon slashdotted ? Jep, another odd point.
:)
- addr.arpa (208.185.175.66) 96.801 ms 97.656 ms 97.633 ms
But in case this is some kind of phishing, they at least manipulated some reverse
records too
traceroute to www.mturk.com (207.171.166.182), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
[...]
11 amazon-above.mpr1.iad5.us.mfnx.net.175.185.208.in
12 72.21.201.27 97.109 ms 97.347 ms 98.164 ms
13 166-182.amazon.com (207.171.166.182) 98.107 ms 97.069 ms 97.510 ms
One billion people on planet earth make less than $1 per day. Perhaps you are not the target audience...
Last hop is Amazon owned IP space they might have been looking to hide the whois on the domain.
whois 207.171.166.182
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[whois.arin.net]
OrgName: Amazon.com, Inc.
OrgID: AMAZON-4
Address: 605 5th Ave S
City: SEATTLE
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98104
Country: US
NetRange: 207.171.160.0 - 207.171.191.255
CIDR: 207.171.160.0/19
NetName: AMAZON-01
NetHandle: NET-207-171-160-0-1
Parent: NET-207-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS-1.AMAZON.COM
NameServer: NS-2.AMAZON.COM
NameServer: NS-3.AMAZON.COM
NameServer: AUTH00.NS.UU.NET
Comment:
RegDate: 1999-09-23
Updated: 2002-03-19
RTechHandle: AC6-ORG-ARIN
RTechName: Amazon.com, Inc.
RTechPhone: +1-206-266-2187
RTechEmail: NOC@amazon.com
OrgTechHandle: ROLEA19-ARIN
OrgTechName: Role Account
OrgTechPhone: +1-206-266-2187
OrgTechEmail: noc@amazon.com
No sir I dont like it.
We're grateful to have been Slashdotted! Our beta site, mturk.amazon.com, is experiencing the Slashdot effect. You can still read about Amazon Mechanical Turk and its web services APIs at www.amazon.com/webservices. Also, send a blank email to aws@amazon.com if you want us to email you when page load times recover. The Amazon Mechanical Turk Team
There was an interesting article a while back about a Collaborative Human Interpreter (CHI).
The idea is to harness this kind of thing to develop software for the global brain.
How about this one?
Circumcision is child abuse.