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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.
Great... Another way for /.'ers to waste time at work.
GOOD JOB AMAZON
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This could get addictive.
Does this mean I can get paid for breaking CAPTCHAs?
Why not fork?
- can you see boobs in the picture ?
- Is there a donkey in the picture ?
- Can you see the can of whipped cream ?
- is there chocolate paint involved..
Advanced indexing of Pr0n, humanity is moving forward, no doubt.
Pepsi pays Amazon 3 cents for product placement. You are shown an image of a Pepsi can. "What kind of soda is this?" "pepsi", you answer. You get paid 2 cents.
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
Maybe it's just me, but it seems that it's not really worth it. Consider the following task, for example:
Guess how much you get paid for that. 2 dollars? 3? That wouldn't be unreasonable, I think, considering that you're supposed to write an entire product description from scratch for which additional "research" is required. The actual amount paid is only 65 cents, though.
Maybe it's just me, but if I check to see how much I need to work in my regular job to make 65 cents, then it does not make any sense to invest more than a few minutes into a task like this, and it seems that it would take more than that to actually complete it. The fact that there's a review required afterwards doesn't exactly make things better, either - if what you did gets rejected, then you've essentially worked for nothing (I wonder if there's anything that keeps amazon from still using your description in this case, too...).
In other words, the whole thing seems like a good idea in theory, but it won't really take off until they're willing to actually pay you a reasonable amount.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Anyone want to make an estimation of $/hr earned doing this? I'm at work, and don't have the balls to spend 20 minutes earning cash online ;)
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Wow, I can give up my day job!
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
I'm a bit too paranoid to type my Amazon user name and password into a site that isn't on the main amazon.com domain....I can't find it mentioned anywhere on amazon's main site. Can somebody a little bit less of a wuss tell me if it is legit?
Monstar L
following HIT: "Is there a goat in that picture?"
Crime in your neighborhood?
Get a webcam...
After a quick review of the available tasks, I must say this looks like a huge scam. Most of the tasks are marketing oriented (e.g. copywriting, photo manipulation), for which experienced contractors get paid $30 to $50 per hour.
Only 75 cents to research and write a complete automotive product description? Are they kidding? Sure, they say I can copy the description from the manufacturer's Web site, but my time is still worth more than that. Besides, I think it's the responsibility of the manufacturer to make sure their Amazon listing is correct. That's how they do it on IMDB.
I can only hope the program will make more sense as they add more requesters and more tasks.
They are asking you to rewrite product descriptions and will pay you 60 cents?
Not only will the work most likely be shoddy, but it seems like they are trying to replace someone else's job by using this cheap online service.
Yes, for some it may provide rewards but if you calculate the amount of time spent on each item VS. the payment reward (usually a few pennies) it is just not worth someone's free time.
Why don't they just hire a staff of people to work on these 'HITS'?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'm interested to know if those living overseas can participate. If so, they would drive down the labor costs so much that only truly desperate Americans would participate in this piecework scheme.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Since this is all web-services driven, it seems to me you could create an interesting cycle with a simple program:
1) Use the API to find a HIT, and sign up to complete it.
2) Create a new HIT that basically asks someone to complete the first HIT,
only for $0.01 less than the original HIT was offering.
3) Do this for every existing HIT.
4) Profit?
Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
Rather than think about how much you could make per hour on this, think about how much your time is worth. Are you worth $65,000 per year? Maybe you're worth more or you value your time more? In any case, at $65,000 per year, you make about $0.52 per minute.
So to accomplish the 3 cent task and make your time worth it, you should spend no more than about 2 and a half seconds from the second you begin to the second you finish and get approval.
On some of the higher paying ones, oh, say $0.40 for writing a full product review, you could devote almost a full minute!
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.
The reminds me of the Philip K. Dick novel in which the main character thinks he lives an ordinary life, and who solves the daily puzzle in the newspaper every day for cheap entertainment. In reality, though, the whole town he lives in is a front, and the fun puzzles he's solving in the newspaper are actually cleverly disguised military strategy problems of some sort.
Quick -- someone patent that storyline and sue Amazon for infringement!
Keep them coming, Amazon!
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
Guys, let me tell.
0 &p=irol-news
It's registered through Godaddy.com, one of the companies spammers/phishers love to use.
It has hotmail contact addresses in whois. Impossible for a company like Amazon
No clue of such thing on official Amazon press room
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=17606
So if it looks like,acts like,runs like (amazon gigantic server farm slashdotted?) a regular phishing site, it is. Even if it made to Slashdot. I'd say pull the story until Amazon comes up with an explanation. Before any harm done.
It could be even a more "elite" hack including subdomain/DNS hacking. I am a spamcop mail customer and I see amazing things everyday.
In risk of looking very funny if it is not anything above, happily posting it.
or as we used to say in the UK, "Pull the other one, it's get bells on"
Or as I say today, "40 cents for a product description!?!?! Fuck off!"
No but, yeah but, no but...
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
Are the 3rd world drones that will do this pulling themselves up by their bootstraps into the information age or is this some kind of futuristic Dickensian sweatshop where piecemeal work is paid at three cents a click?
For the image ones, couldn't you create 5 bots each with a different account and each one picks a different image and one picks None of these? One of them would be approved and you'd get paid, right?
Also if they are having humans approve your image selection before you get paid, isn't that as much effort as you making your original choice?
Well, that is probably a whole month's average income for someone in Elbonia...
Oh well, what the hell...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/104-1026772-4 777552?node=15879911
OK, I hurried a bit but I felt as I had to.
/ /mturk.com
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http:
It is indeed in Amazon netblock but registering it through godaddy.com with a hotmail address... Gee, I wish I could show like 40 phishing mails I received with the same pattern.
Sadly there are many victims of phishing sites, and they get slashdotted because the database software can't handle that many requests.
I have never seen such a unserious whois from a big company like amazon. There are many registrars REJECTING hotmail.com contact addresses even!
... basically it's just like a sneaker factory in Vietnam, but with a cool-sounding name.
#DeleteChrome
Make the site dog ass slow so you can ID 3 photos in 10 minutes. I'm up to 9 cents! I guess I should get back to coding, since thats what the OTHER people are paying me to do right now...
Internet Cafe's are popular in many countries, although if you're paying by the hour to use a PC, that would really eat into your proffit margin.
Always look to spammers and pornographers to solve the world's most challenging computational puzzles before anyone else.
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.
Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers.
I wonder if serving web pages counts as such a task. Because their computers sure are doing a crappy job of it at the moment.
..they could ask us questions like "Is this a dupe?"
-- Boycott Shell
It reminds me of a little semi-scam some company had going in my town a few years back. . .
"You are invited to participate in a screen test of a new television series!"
People would go down and be a test-audience for a television pilot, and then fill out a questionnaire at the end. People, loving their TV culture, were tickled pink to be asked to do this. --Heck, they were even paid something like $15 for their participation!
So, a buddy of mine went to see what it was all about. . .
Basically, some marketing research firm had acquired the rights to an old pilot which never made it to air. They played this for people, and also played a bunch of adverts during the commercial breaks. The questionnaire asked a few boring questions about the pilot, but it also asked a curiously high number of questions about the ad spots. Stuff like, "Which of the two detergent packages in the ad did you find more appealing? The Blue or the Red?"
--Obviously the whole contrivance was designed to test market, uh, marketing.
Either way, by friend was amazed that nobody else seemed to catch on, took his fifteen bucks, and left shaking his head.
-FL
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.
Or maybe this would require a new "Grid Kid" architecture with an advanced resource broker to farm out the questions based on difficulty and school grade level.
It is good to know that we humans are still not obsolete, even though we have been relegated to the menial jobs...
It looks like you're trying to post to Slashdot!
Do you want to:
a) make the grammatical correction above;
b) go back to flipping hamburgers; or
c) commence robot-smashing?
-Clippy
If you're scoffing because you're already employed at a job that pays better, then you're doing what you should. Somebody already values your labor more presumably because you are more productive doing that job rather than identifying items in pictures. I work plenty of hours and am well compensated for it. My remaining time is very valuable to me. Perhaps one should not scoff, but politely say "No, thanks." The job one might scoff at today might be the job that saves your ass tomorrow.
On the other hand, if you're not working, underemployed, or paid really low, scoffing is probably not the right thing to do, and instead of moping about having no job, you should get busy and start looking for pizza places in pictures, and if they're close, maybe see if they have a job. When I'm not employed and work is hard to come by, I'll pump gas, work a car wash, flip burgers, sweep floors, empty trash, deliver pizza, whatever it takes. It might not be enough to live on, but it's closer to livable than making nothing.
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.
I like the Mechanical Turk service. It's just like my CHI proposal from half a year ago made real.3 .html
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-03-25-n4
While most of the comments here seem to focus on the Worker side of this (those getting paid for answering simple questions), there's also the Requester side -- programmers tapping into the power of "fake" (but working!) AI. (Ladies and gentleman, we present you the global brain... it can think for you if you micro-pay!) I think we can implement many new programs/ websites in completely new ways, and there may even be fresh commercial niche programs coming out of this. Maybe in 50 years, we'll include AMT (or similar services) into our software as naturally as we now include, say, SQL.
I wish the site was working better at the moment (even before it has been Slashdotted, it was behaving strangely), and I wish it wouldn't ask me for a US bank account (being from Germany, that kinda hinders me from working with it).