Mechanical Turk

Justice for “Data Janitors”

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Author: Lilly Irani; Publisher: Public Books; Publication Year: 2015. The following article describes how when things in the technology world become automated, the work that is being “replaced” is not actually replaced, but displaced. For example, a manufacturing process that has been automated may replace the individual workers, but over the long term, it just displaces them to monitor the machines and facilitate…

Inside Amazon’s Clickworker Platform: How Half a Million People are Being Paid Pennies to Train AI

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Author: Hope Reese; Publisher: Tech Republic; Publication Year: 2016. The following article discusses how Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (AMT) is an online platform that allows people to perform small tasks for pay. This group, as of 2016, was 75% American, 10-15% Indian and mostly women, and do jobs such as data categorization, metadata tagging, data entry, email harvesting or placing ads on videos. Over 50% of…