Amazon will stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk

(techcrunch.com)

135 points | by bookofjoe 9 hours ago

10 comments

  • CodesInChaos 7 hours ago
    > In a snake-eating-its-own-tail irony, a 2023 analysis found that between 33% and 46% of workers on the platform were using large language models to complete their tasks,

    I assume AI use by workers has risen to the point where it renders Mechanical Turk pointless.

    • skt5 5 hours ago
      This likely means those consuming the outputs of Mechanical Turk don't have a good way to measure the value (aka quality) of the outputs.

      If they did - then they shouldn't care whether it's a human or a LLM. And if it's a LLM - then the cost will roughly correlate to the MIN(cost of the LLM, cost of a human) to do the task.

      • AndrewOMartin 4 hours ago
        I think the "state of the art" of measuring the quality of outputs was to send the same task to multiple "agents" and only accept answers if over a certain amount agree. With some human review and reputation scoring sprinkled on top. It was a while since I was in this field though
      • renegade-otter 1 hour ago
        The problem is bigger. Outside of coding, there is no real way to reinforce a model with pass/fail cycles until it stops hallucinating. This is why customer service uses will always have a problem. This compounds as you chain agents together.

        It's like the speed of light - to get to that point, you need exponentially more energy, and you will never ever get there.

    • moralestapia 7 hours ago
      Yeah, I was doing this kind of Artificial Artificial Artificial Intelligence back in 2012 to make some extra $$$. Glad they finally "patched" that hole ^^.
      • pc86 6 hours ago
        You were using LLMs in 2012?
        • subarctic 5 hours ago
          Artificial AI = stuff like mechanical turk where they get humans to do stuff computers can't do and make it look like it's "AI"

          Artificial Artificial Intelligence = using computers to do mechanical turk jobs

          • moralestapia 5 hours ago
            You wrote the same thing twice, hehe.

            But the point gets across.

            • icepush 4 hours ago
              Artificial Artificial Artificial intelligence is when the chat bot is out of capacity, so a person in India is writing the response that gets returned by the LLM which gets pasted into Mechanical Turk.
              • moralestapia 3 hours ago
                "Artificial AI"

                and

                "Artificial Artificial intelligence"

                are the same thing.

                Come on. This site can do better.

                • vitally3643 2 hours ago
                  yes, this site can do a lot better than nitpicking acronyms
        • simlevesque 6 hours ago
          They were faking artificial intelligence by using real individuals.
          • HPsquared 3 hours ago
            That's just Artificial Artificial Intelligence, the triple negative implies they built an automated system to impersonate humans who impersonate an automated system (which ultimately imitates a human).
        • pixel_popping 6 hours ago
          Fiverr-5.5 was the leading model back then.
        • HPsquared 3 hours ago
          Living, Low-income Minions?
          • moralestapia 3 hours ago
            This is my main argument as to why (people with) AI will not take over the world.

            Cheap, disposable, on-demand intelligence has existed for millennia.

            If anything, AI is more of an equalizer.

        • moralestapia 6 hours ago
          Not LLMs. (Useful) LLMs came to the market around 2022.
    • 6510 4 hours ago
      I don't see why I would care how they do the job. Just do the job, I have other things to do.
  • jordemort 4 hours ago
    I turked for a bit trying to make some extra cash leading up to my wedding, but it was a very time-inefficient way to make money. I think I managed to wring 10 or 20 bucks out of it tops after plugging at it for a month.
  • root-parent 6 hours ago
    I can see a high value startup, that will provide Human Intelligence with real Humans, locked in the room, with no network, books, LLMs and monitored 24x7 with cameras.
    • HoldOnAMinute 5 hours ago
      Please enjoy each task equally
    • eli 3 hours ago
      I'd suggest first looking into the conditions that enable humans to generate sustained, high quality output.
    • mcmcmc 4 hours ago
      24/7 isolation with no stimulation outside of work? Wonder if the hallucination rate would be higher or lower
      • morkalork 4 hours ago
        Just give them some exercise bikes to pedal to keep them physically occupied
  • nullsmack 7 hours ago
    I had no idea this was still around.

    It helped me buy a Battlefield 2 "Special Forces" expansion pack back in the day.

    Well, I could've bought it either way but buying it didn't impact my normal income because I did Mechanical Turk in my free time enough to get it.

  • aabhay 2 hours ago
    This has very little to do with “AI replacing jobs” and much much more to do with a bad product getting obsoleted by better ones.

    Human labeling is a two sided marketplace and so as any marketplace startup knows, both sides need to be constantly nurtured otherwise the system can collapse as worsening quality leads to churn and a vicious cycle that empties out the platform.

    In labeling, you need to understand the limitations of individual work and fatigue, keep your pipeline bursting with awesome and consistent work, and improve the platform to make customer experience great.

    AMT has been totally languishing in all these respects. Pay is terrible, dishonesty rampant, etc. It was a bad product, no need to pedestalize it or turn it political

  • obblekk 6 hours ago
    Maybe the most unambiguous "ai will automate work" example I've seen yet.

    Absolutely does not imply the workers are automated since they can now use the current models to do more complex tasks at the vast number of new AI training data startups.

    Turk was simply not designed for greater complexity tasks and so much of their lunch has been eaten by startups specifically built to collect AI training data.

  • leohonexus 5 hours ago
    Where do I find participants for my user studies then?
  • sampton 4 hours ago
    Pour one out for the original A.I. (Actual Indians).
  • josefritzishere 8 hours ago
    It's a shame. Mechanical Turk works better than any AI.
    • xandrius 8 hours ago
      It's still AI, just a different type.
      • CodesInChaos 7 hours ago
        The Actually Indian kind?
        • mghackerlady 7 hours ago
          Hey, maybe they're Indonesian!
          • pwython 7 hours ago
            I thought they were Turkish.
          • expedition32 5 hours ago
            Ever been to Singapore? Their apartments have a room for a Indonesian maid.

            Never underestimate just how cheap human life is!

        • testuser1984 4 hours ago
          American Idiot kind
        • shshsjsj 5 hours ago
          mild racism, needs to be reported
          • fennecbutt 1 hour ago
            Oh my goooood, the average Asian person eats more rice than they do bread.
          • aswegs8 5 hours ago
            It's a joke
          • Faaak 5 hours ago
            you can call the police
          • HoldOnAMinute 5 hours ago
            India is not a race, therefore this is not racist.
    • brokensegue 6 hours ago
      personally, i've never had good luck with MT's quality.
  • baggachipz 7 hours ago
    They moved all the Mechanical Turk workers over to robot and autotaxi piloting.
    • teddyh 6 hours ago
      And monitoring of “cashier-free” grocery stores.