Amazon lets people help computers — and get paid

Mechanical Turk offers a new kind of outsourcing

It used to be that humans told computers what to do.

But with the launch of Amazon.com’s newest service, called Amazon Mechanical Turk, a computer program will be able to ask humans to perform tasks that it can’t do itself.

The name Mechanical Turk dates back to 1769, when a Hungarian created a wooden robotlike mannequin that supposedly could play chess — even defeating chess fanatic Benjamin Franklin in Paris.

The Mechanical Turk toured around Europe to the amazement of large crowds and to the suspicion of a great many skeptics who surmised that a chess master was hiding inside. (Edgar Allen Poe even wrote an article detailing how it could be done.)

The invisible human element is the idea behind Amazon Mechanical Turk, through which Amazon plans to supply "artificial artificial intelligence" — connecting programs needing the human touch with humans, who can outperform computers in certain tasks

Examples of what humans can do better than computers? Evaluate beauty, translate text and find specific objects in photos.

By KRISTEN MILLARES BOLT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

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