An Honest Amazon Mechanical Turk Tutorial

If you’re looking for a literal Amazon Mechanical Turk tutorial that spells out piece-by-piece how it works, this is not the article for you. 

In a world with an ever-increasing reliance on technology, it’s nice to know that humans are still superior to computers. In certain tasks, at least. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) “celebrates” that by providing a service where humans are still the preferred means to accomplish a task. 

However, there are truths about MTurk that you should be aware of before signing up. Here is an honest Amazon Mechanical Turk Tutorial. 

History and Context

The name “Mechanical Turk” comes from an 18th-century chess-playing automaton. Created by Wolfgang von Kempelen, “the Turk,” as it was colloquially known, toured Europe to display a machine’s superiority over humanity. The Turk even beat Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin in what was surely a crowd-pleasing series of chess matches. 

It was later revealed that the Turk was not an automaton at all. It was, in fact, a human chess master stuffed into a cabinet beneath the chessboard that controlled a humanoid dummy. An assuredly uncomfortable human was who beat Franklin and Bonaparte – not a machine. 

When naming a service where a human is behind a computer interface, “Mechanical Turk” seems quite fitting. 

Of course, when it comes to chess nowadays, computers are pretty badass. 

What Is Amazon Mechanical Turk?

MTurk is a crowdsourcing website for businesses to hire remotely located workers to perform discrete on-demand tasks that computers are currently unable to do. This service was conceived by Venky Harinarayan in a U.S. patent disclosure in 2001. Though, Jeff Bezos likes to take credit for it. 

Businesses, called Requesters, hire remotely located workers, called Workers (how creative), for literal pennies on the dollar to perform simple tasks. These tasks are things only a human can do like:

• Finding objects in photos
• Writing reviews
• Determining if a hotel is family-friendly
• Writing product descriptions
• Pushing a certain when a certain prompt appears
• And so on…

Requesters post jobs and Workers accept them. Simple as that. 

How MTurk Works

Workers have the “freedom” to set their own hours and are not under any obligation to accept any particular task. If one doesn’t, another will. Workers fall under the contractor technicality by design. Amazon cannot be bothered to pay Workers a liveable wage. 

Amazon refuses to file the necessary forms or pay payroll taxes. This is aimed at skirting minimum wage, overtime, and worker’s comp. In 2013, the average wage for the multiple microtasks assigned – if performed quickly – is about one dollar an hour. 

Requesters post simple tasks – for as little pay as is legally required – and Workers accept and perform them. They are then reviewed by Requesters. A negative review can negatively affect Workers reputation and any potential task opportunities. 

Sure sounds like slave labor, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, legally speaking, this is acceptable. 

What MTurk Is Used For

If you’re wondering what kind of work or tasks MTurk is used for, here’s a bit of an Amazon Mechanical Turk tutorial: 

Human-subject Research

Beginning in 2010, numerous researchers have used MTurk to recruit subjects for social science experiments. General consensus among researchers is that MTurk is effective at recruiting a diverse sample but far less effective in studies that require more precisely defined populations. The cost of studies is far more affordable when using MTurk than more traditional means of funding. 

Machine Learning

Machine learning researchers have hired Workers through MTurk to produce data sets such as SQuAD, a question-answering dataset. 

Missing Persons Searches

Since 2007, MTurk has been used, unsuccessfully, to search for prominent missing persons. 

Artistic Works

Artist xtine burrough created The Mechanical Olympics (2008), Endless Om (2015), and Meditations on Digital Labor through MTurk. Other artists have used the service as well. 

Third-party Programming

Programmers have developed various browser extensions and scripts designed to simplify the process of completing jobs. 

Labor Issues

A 2016 Pew Research study found that a quarter of online “gig workers,” much like those on MTurk, have to because of a lack of work opportunities in their part of the country. Since Workers are legally considered independent contractors, they are, in theory, not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

However, according to U.S. Labor Law and Professor Miriam Cherry of Saint Louis University School of Law,

“Workers on Mechanical Turk are no different than, say, construction workers who show up at job sites and work for a day or two on a project. Those construction workers can still file a lawsuit under the Fair Labor Standards Act for wage theft, even though they are not considered employees [under Amazon’s contract].” 

In 2014, The Nation magazine reported that Requesters have taken advantage of Workers by having them perform tasks, then rejecting their submissions in order to avoid paying them. Imagine how cheap you have to be to refuse to pay someone a few measly cents. 

That is Mr. Krabs level cheap. 

And there is, seemingly, no end to this behavior. 

Conclusion

Amazon believes, and correctly so, that it can get away with offering literal pennies to Workers because they have the “freedom” to say no. For many of them, they don’t have a choice. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is knowingly and willingly taking advantage of labor. 

In many ways, we have come a long, long way in the advancement of labor. Things are, in general, far better now than they have been in the past. But for many, like MTurk Workers, don’t have an opportunity. Amazon and Bezos know this and they exploit them. 

If you wanted an Amazon Mechanical Turk tutorial, you got one. Just not the one you were expecting. 

How’s the view from space, Bezos?