Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Amazon Patents Humans Assisting Computers

Posted by kdawson on from the mechanical-turk dept.

theodp writes "Amazon's latest patent, the Hybrid Machine/Human Computing Arrangement, reads like scary sci-fi, with claims covering the use of humans 'of college educated, at most high school educated, at most elementary school educated, and not formally educated' to perform subtasks dispatched by a computer. From the patent: 'For examples, the task on hand requires French speaking humans, and Task Server has requested that each subtask be performed by at least 10 humans with a past accuracy record of at least 90%.' Yikes."

3 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. This is Amazon's Mechanical Turk system by Diomidis+Spinellis · · Score: 4, Informative

    Amazon has already deployed such a system under the name of Mechanical Turk. The idea is that humans assist computers, providing what is cutely named artificial artifical intelligence. You can read more about the concept in an article that ACM Queue run on May 2006.
    --
    Code Quality: The Open Source Perspective

  2. Re:I for one... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Welcome to Manna. Come to my journal if you want to invest in The Oregon Project, just in case....

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  3. Re:So What? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just read Marshall Brain's take on the future if a system like Mechanical Turk became the standard for Management in US corporations.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.