In the late eighteenth century, Hungarian inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen constructed what many people living at the time were duped into believing was the first truly intelligent machine: an ornate wooden chest, presided over by a magisterial wooden statue of a turbaned man\u2014a \u201cTurk\u201d\u2014that could move around the pieces of a chessboard as if by magic and win game after game against actual, human chess players. It was eventually revealed to be a hoax: A chess master would sit inside the box and control the game via an array of levers. The phrase \u201cmechanical Turk\u201d has since then become shorthand to describe instances in which a supposedly intelligent machine is actually an illusion, powered beneath the hood by human intelligence.<\/p>\n
It was a fitting name, therefore, for the first mainstream website that paid gig workers to complete menial digital tasks that weren\u2019t yet amenable to automation, such as transcribing audio files, identifying objects featured in satellite images, and verifying restaurant contact information. Launched by Amazon in 2005 and colloquially known as \u201cMTurk,\u201d Mechanical Turk pays workers tiny amounts\u2014anywhere from one cent to a handful of dollars\u2014for completing a particular \u201chuman intelligence task,\u201d or HIT, as they\u2019re known. It also paved the way to later freelance sites like Fiverr and Upwork.<\/p>\n
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has described<\/a> Mechanical Turk as \u201cartificial artificial intelligence.\u201d Since its launch, however, actual artificial intelligence has rapidly been catching up. Just as chess-playing algorithms like IBM\u2019s Deep Blue would eventually outperform human chess masters, modern AI systems are able to perform many of the tasks found on Mechanical Turk much more efficiently (and cheaply) than humans.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s little wonder then that Amazon appears to be in the early stages of retiring its 21-year-old service. On June 30<\/a>, Amazon added an inconspicuous notice to the MTurk website<\/a>: \u201cAmazon Mechanical Turk will be closed to new customers, effective July 30, 2026,\u201d the company wrote. \u201cExisting users will not be impacted by this change.\u201d <\/p>\n In another announcement<\/a> within the developer guide for SageMaker AI, Amazon Web Services\u2019 AI-building platform, AWS added that it \u201ccontinues to invest in security and availability improvements for Mechanical Turk, but we do not plan to introduce new features.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, it appears that active MTurkers will be able to continue using the platform after the July 30 cutoff date. But given the rapid pace of evolution of AI-driven automation, it\u2019s likely that the number of tasks found on the platform\u2014and therefore its potential profitability for gig workers\u2014will dwindle. Amazon didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment to elaborate on the platform\u2019s future for current users.<\/p>\n Academic researchers who once relied on MTurk to conduct surveys have been abandoning the platform<\/a> in droves in recent years, in part because of the growing presence of AI bots posing as human participants.<\/p>\n