So, I see that Amazon launched a new web service. This service lets programs ask people questions. People are payed by the developer to answer questions for their program. Amazon profits by middleman fees.
Most of the articles I'm reading look at the
worker side of
MTurk (Amazon Mechanical Turk.) Others raise
concerns over the ethics of having people work for computers. I'm glad that MTurk is forcing people to look at the relationship between people and programs. We need to have that discussion sooner rather than later.
I'm intrigued with MTurk because Amazon has created a market for simple tasks that may be just beyond the ability of current computer systems. Set a automated task to work solving MTurk HITs. The developer would get a tidy pile if it worked. If it didn't work, it would be kicked out for erroneous work. There are other aspects that need exploring. I can't wait to see how a market based on units of microwork works.