Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Opens Up to the Masses

Yesterday Amazon announced it has created a Web interface that makes its “Mechanical Turk” service easier for businesses to use. Until now, companies needed software coding expertise to set up and manage the service, whereby anonymous Web users can sign up to perform small tasks for small payments. In Boston, Wade recently wrote about one company that uses the service, Needham, MA-based Mobicious, to screen photos submitted to its SnapMyLife mobile phone application.

Launched in late 2005, Amazon Mechanical Turk aggregates so-called “human intelligence tasks” that are hard for computers but easy for people, like recognizing objects in photos, judging whether a photo is offensive, or identifying actors in DVDs. The name comes from the 18th-century chess-playing machine called The Turk: it plays on the fact that the “machine” was actually an elaborate hoax operated by a person inside.

It’s a pretty interesting idea, and now a much broader range of companies can potentially use it. ZDNet has a nice piece explaining what business users can do with it, and showing the new interface that attempts to take the service “beyond the geek chic crowd.”

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.