Amazon Mechanical Turk Question and Answer Machine: Ask Questions Get Answers - Also Get Paid to Answer Questions!   - 4,337 Views, 3 Comments

The term “mechanical Turk” is a reference to a 16th century “artificial intelligence” chess playing machine called the Turk, which actually had a human chess master hidden within.

The concept, as Amazon explains it, is that “Humans are much more effective than computers at solving some types of problems, like finding specific objects in pictures, evaluating beauty, or translating text…. the Amazon Mechanical Turk web service solves the problem of getting work done in a cost-effective manner by people who have the skill to do the work.”

Questions you ask the Amazon Mechanical Turk question and answer machine are called “HITs” (Human Intelligence Task), and you create HITs through a simple form. You create your question, and then say how much you are willing to pay for the answer - you can accept an answer from just one person, or from several.

So, what sorts of questions might you ask the Amazon Mechanical Turk? Questions currently up on the Amazon Mechanical Turk include:

“Tell us which articles are relevant to a given company, and which are not.”

“Find the email address of the owner / manager of a gym.”

“Choose a picture for a product.”

and

“Evaluate results of this search.”

Want to get paid to answer questions? Amazon goes on to explain that “For people who want to earn money in their spare time, the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site solves the problem of finding work that they can do wherever and whenever they want.”

That said, HITs can cost mere cents, which suggests that those answering the HITs may be primarily in countries other than the U.S..

One very interesting thing about the Amazon Mechanical Turk is that there is an API for the system, so that you can interface with it and create an automated system for getting your own tasks answered and addressed!

Want to learn more? Check out the Amazon Mechanical Turk here.