Amazon Patents Humans Assisting Computers

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."

Comments

I for one...

[oskay]

predict that the first post will have something to do with our new robotic overlords....

Re:I for one...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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

In other news

[neoform]

Amazon patents "using a computer".

Insert disk...

[muffel]

... in drive A:

I've done that since the 80's.

This is Amazon's Mechanical Turk system

[Diomidis Spinellis]

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

Re:This is Amazon's Mechanical Turk system

[mls]

Mod parent up

On the "Data Improvement" front, I implemented something like this maybe 5 or 6 years ago. The company had a workforce of "lower" cost data entry staff, and when volumes of data came in over the web, we validated what we could programmitically, then routed questional records to human staff for cleanup and use in building a dictionary of sorts that made our automated process better. It was more cost effective to go this hybrid computing route than to throw lots of "expensive" programming at it.

In other news..

[pak9rabid]

Automaker Ford was ganted the following patent: A hybrid automobile/human driving arrangement which advantageously involves humans to assist an automobile to solve particular tasks, such as transporting a human, or other non-human items such as freight...

Re:So What?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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

Could an invention like this...

[plams]

...by any chance be a viable replacement for the management where I work?

RSS said "ASS"

[emptybody]

RSS feed for this story stated

"Amazon Patents Humans Ass"

that had me rolling on the floor!

Re:RSS said "ASS"

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that if they had patented it, you'd be the one rolling on the floor, but they'd be the ones laughing your ass off.

AI?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

They call it this.

But I think they have this. ;-)

Re:AI?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And I think they have invented This, which is even more scary.

They'll be back!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all fun and games now but it won't be funny when the machine decides your next task is to "Give me your clothes" in an Austrian accent.

This is not a troll...

[CptPicard]

... although the thought is potentially offensive to some. Wouldn't working as a wetware computer-augmenting classifier be the perfect job opportunity for a mentally handicapped person? I mean, someone with a regular IQ would find it boring over time to tell apart cats and dogs in pictures, but it sounds like a challenge for someone who is not in possession of such faculties. And this is exactly the sort of task that is troublesome for AI, while it being trivial for even "challenged" people! Cross-check the responses, reward those who vote with the consensus, and you've got something that actually might even work as a teaching tool... and how many Down's syndrome people could say they hold a "computer job"?

Don't flame me, I'm physically disabled myself and therefore am quite familiar with the troubles disabled people of all kinds face in particular when it comes to finding meaningful employment...

Re:This is not a troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

... although the thought is potentially offensive to some.

There's a lot of people out there who want to be offended and are looking for ways to be offended. Why? It's a form of bullying, IMHO. They want a reason to order you to change behavior. And when you ask them why they are offended, they give some half-ass answer. It's just a power trip.

Sorry about your handicap and I'm sorry you had to mention it so that you wouldn't be modded "Troll" or "Flamebait".

Re:This is not a troll...

[StikyPad]

This would be perfect if it could be done from home.

And my 5-year-old would be happy because he'd get to play "games" as much as he wanted.

"Is it bedtime yet?"

"I SAID CLICK ON THE DOGS!!!"

Re:Eh?

[twitter]

Interactive proof system with a human prover == not terribly scary to me.

Yeah, but a patent on it is. Even more scary is a patent on a program that really just prompts the user for input.

Re:Prior Art

[QuantumG]

Oh boy. I tell ya. The concept of patent clearly isn't part of the education system.

Imagine I invent a new kind of lawn mower. I file a patent to protect my invention for 20 years so I can commercialize it without having to worry about the existing lawn mower companies snapping up my invention and beating me to market. What's the title on the patent going to be? That's right:

"A mechanism for the automated trimming of grass."

In the patent I will describe how the mechanism works. What prior art there has been in automatted trimming of grass, why my invention is novel and how hard/easy it is to manufacture.

So will get posted to Slashdot about it?

"Man Patents Lawnmower."

Then everyone will have a bit of a moan about how the patent office doesn't know what they're doing anymore and maybe they'll quote a few lines from the patent where I'm outlining what a lawnmower is with the intention of claiming that this is what I am patenting.