Amazon will stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk

7/6/2026 at 2:24:35 PM

> 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.

by CodesInChaos

7/6/2026 at 4:17:52 PM

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.

by skt5

7/6/2026 at 5:04:44 PM

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

by AndrewOMartin

7/6/2026 at 8:11:08 PM

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.

by renegade-otter

7/6/2026 at 2:55:25 PM

Yeah, I was doing this kind of Artificial Artificial Artificial Intelligence back in 2012 to make some extra $$$. Glad they finally "patched" that hole ^^.

by moralestapia

7/6/2026 at 3:09:04 PM

You were using LLMs in 2012?

by pc86

7/6/2026 at 4:23:00 PM

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

by subarctic

7/6/2026 at 4:31:20 PM

You wrote the same thing twice, hehe.

But the point gets across.

by moralestapia

7/6/2026 at 5:38:19 PM

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.

by icepush

7/6/2026 at 6:29:10 PM

"Artificial AI"

and

"Artificial Artificial intelligence"

are the same thing.

Come on. This site can do better.

by moralestapia

7/6/2026 at 10:15:44 PM

Are they? If one uses artificial in the sense of "fake" then a human pretending to be a machine AI would count as an artificial AI. The only scenario where this doesn't hold is if you are using "artificial" in the sense of "not created by nature".

by icepush

7/6/2026 at 7:04:54 PM

yes, this site can do a lot better than nitpicking acronyms

by vitally3643

7/6/2026 at 3:15:03 PM

They were faking artificial intelligence by using real individuals.

by simlevesque

7/6/2026 at 6:25:38 PM

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).

by HPsquared

7/6/2026 at 3:16:09 PM

Fiverr-5.5 was the leading model back then.

by pixel_popping

7/6/2026 at 6:22:12 PM

Living, Low-income Minions?

by HPsquared

7/6/2026 at 6:30:49 PM

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.

by moralestapia

7/6/2026 at 3:44:37 PM

Not LLMs. (Useful) LLMs came to the market around 2022.

by moralestapia

7/6/2026 at 5:28:18 PM

I don't see why I would care how they do the job. Just do the job, I have other things to do.

by 6510

7/6/2026 at 5:36:57 PM

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.

by jordemort

7/6/2026 at 3:32:51 PM

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.

by root-parent

7/6/2026 at 4:32:12 PM

Please enjoy each task equally

by HoldOnAMinute

7/6/2026 at 6:19:30 PM

I'd suggest first looking into the conditions that enable humans to generate sustained, high quality output.

by eli

7/6/2026 at 4:56:54 PM

24/7 isolation with no stimulation outside of work? Wonder if the hallucination rate would be higher or lower

by mcmcmc

7/6/2026 at 5:39:15 PM

Just give them some exercise bikes to pedal to keep them physically occupied

by morkalork

7/6/2026 at 2:01:18 PM

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.

by nullsmack

7/6/2026 at 3:51:59 PM

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.

by obblekk

7/6/2026 at 7:41:03 PM

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

by aabhay

7/6/2026 at 3:58:05 PM

Where do I find participants for my user studies then?

by leohonexus

7/6/2026 at 7:29:52 PM

https://prolific.com

by jakelsaunders94

7/6/2026 at 5:37:58 PM

Pour one out for the original A.I. (Actual Indians).

by sampton

7/6/2026 at 1:36:36 PM

It's a shame. Mechanical Turk works better than any AI.

by josefritzishere

7/6/2026 at 1:55:57 PM

It's still AI, just a different type.

by xandrius

7/6/2026 at 2:19:07 PM

The Actually Indian kind?

by CodesInChaos

7/6/2026 at 2:33:17 PM

Hey, maybe they're Indonesian!

by mghackerlady

7/6/2026 at 2:55:11 PM

I thought they were Turkish.

by pwython

7/6/2026 at 4:54:48 PM

Ever been to Singapore? Their apartments have a room for a Indonesian maid.

Never underestimate just how cheap human life is!

by expedition32

7/6/2026 at 5:12:20 PM

American Idiot kind

by testuser1984

7/6/2026 at 5:13:36 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

7/6/2026 at 4:25:47 PM

mild racism, needs to be reported

by shshsjsj

7/6/2026 at 8:22:00 PM

Oh my goooood, the average Asian person eats more rice than they do bread.

by fennecbutt

7/6/2026 at 4:30:28 PM

It's a joke

by aswegs8

7/6/2026 at 4:31:15 PM

you can call the police

by Faaak

7/6/2026 at 4:33:57 PM

India is not a race, therefore this is not racist.

by HoldOnAMinute

7/6/2026 at 3:32:14 PM

personally, i've never had good luck with MT's quality.

by brokensegue

7/6/2026 at 2:27:33 PM

They moved all the Mechanical Turk workers over to robot and autotaxi piloting.

by baggachipz

7/6/2026 at 3:16:14 PM

And monitoring of “cashier-free” grocery stores.

by teddyh