Mechanical Turk
From SI410
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mazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is an Internet marketplace that is currently owned and operated by Amazon Web Services. Individuals and businesses (known as Requestors) post Human Intelligent Tasks (HITs) on the site, which can then be completed by MTurk workers (also known as Providers or Turkers) for monetary payment set by the Requetor. HITs are tasks that cannot be completed by computers, thus requiring the use of human intelligence.
Etymology
The name Mechanical Turk comes from the 18th century chess-playing automaton, which was named "The Turk". The Turk was created by Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1770 in Austria. The machine appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against any human opponent, even beating Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin on its tour of Europe. [1]
- ↑ SCHAFFER, Simon (1999), "Enlightened Automata", in Clark et al. (Eds), The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, pp. 126-165.
