Last November, with relatively little fanfare, sales-giant Amazon introduced a new work-for-hire program called Mechanical Turk. Without having to submit a resume or application, anyone with an Internet connection and an Amazon account could sign up and start making money. Immediately.
Some tasked asked you to transcribe audio. Others matched pictures to business names. Some made you look up handwritten information on deeds. Others simply asked for your opinion. Simple tasks and easy to do, but they were tasks that machines just couldn’t do.
Amazon recognizes that people still do some jobs better than machines–whether it’s editing product descriptions or spotting street addresses in pictures. It calls these jobs “HIT”s, human intelligence tasks. And they know that businesses are willing to pay to get this repetitive but human-powered work done.
According to Amazon Vice President of Product Management and Developer Relations Adam Selipsky, Mechanical Turk offers a “marketplace for intellectual capital”. It brings business tasks together with the labor needed to complete them. Its technology manages the job listings and captures the results of any work performed.
More after the break…
Although throughout Mechanical Turk’s brief history, most task offers were generated by Amazon and their subdivisions like search engine A9.com, their vision reaches further. Mechanical Turk isn’t just about people working for Amazon interests.
It’s a platform that provides solutions for many kinds of business and it’s scalable. Requesters (the people who pay to load work onto the site) can create jobs with hundreds of tasks or up into the millions. Amazon provides the Website and the programmer interface (the API). They hope that the business world will catch onto the idea, signing up to have their work done this way: Amazon Mechanical Turk is leaving beta and officially launching in just a few weeks.
GETTING TO WORK
Mechanical Turk works like this. You sign up, start accepting task assignments, complete them and then submit them for review. When they pass inspection, you get paid. If you’re expecting to sign up and start earning barrels of cash, think again. You’ll probably struggle to make even minimum wage.
The payments are very, very small. One of the most successful and reputable requesters, Casting Words, pays about 18-19 cents to transcribe a minute of audio. Amazon pays a penny per request for top three favorites: for example, your favorite brands of soda, your favorite movies, your oscar picks and so forth. Another set of tasks pays a penny per Google-Answers-style question, with the possibility of winning one of their $10, $20 or $50 weekly “Great Answer” rewards. You could work yourself to the bone all week for maybe a buck in pay, and walk away with nothing more.
Exploitive? Perhaps not.
Mechanical Turk is the free market in action. After its launch, it was inundated by the infamous SlashDot effect. Tens of thousands of tech-savvy folk popped by to give it a whirl.
Soon the posted task payments began to drop: Early tasks that started at 75 cents, soon dropped to 65, and from 65 to 60, and from 60 to 40, all the way down to the current rate of about 1-3 cents per task. As more and more willing workers joined the site, the job requesters took the increased labor force into account and dynamically lowered payments as they posted new batches of HITs. Classic capitalism.
This didn’t deter the jobseekers. SlashDot poster “Annoying” wrote, “As a broke-ass college student trying to save what meager money I have from work to go on a spring break vacation this year, I can say being able to pull together even another $10 a week would help me immensely, that is the difference between feeling like I am living comfortably, and feeling like I’ll tightened my belt till my eyes are bulging so I can go on vacation.”
Some SlashDot readers even considered subcontracting the work out to India, before realizing that any worker with a reasonably fast Internet connection could sign up directly and skip the enterprising middleman.
Amazon Director of Web Services Software Peter Cohen affirmed both the legality and non-exploitive nature of the program, relying as it does on willing workers. “We spent considerable time making sure that it meets legal requirements,” he said. Amazon declined to comment as to whether labor unions had been consulted before launching the program.
THE APPROVAL GAME
It’s not enough to just sit down at the computer, sign into Mechanical Turk and start getting paid. Your submissions must be accepted before payment gets approved. And you might be surprised at how many of your tasks get graded: it’s automated as well.
Many requesters use a plurality approach to approve or reject submitted tasks. Take the picture-picking task for example, where workers selected the picture that best represents a storefront. You get paid when you pick the most popular result. As Cohen put it, “We’re looking for workers exhibiting the most plural judgement.”
It all depends on how the requester sets up the approval process. Some jobs are hard to do, but easy to verify. After, some work–for example, a write-up–is finished, reviewers look it over and a different kind of plurality takes over. When more people agree that the work looks good, the original worker gets paid. Say two out of three graders agree that you answered properly, you get paid. So do the two graders who agreed. That third grader? His non-agreeing approval task gets rejected.
Some requesters skip plurality entirely and use in-house staff to review and approve Mechanical Turk generated work. They receive the results of the outsourced work, look it over and decide on a case-by-case basis whether to approve or reject the results.
GETTING QUALIFIED
Although you can tart working without prior qualifications, many requesters figured out that asking you to apply for certain tasks helps them manage who does their work.
Every worker gets rated on at least five points: their submission rate, their approval rate, their rejection rate, their return rate (rejecting already-assigned work) and their abandonment rate (failing to finish work within the specified timeframe). These rates determine which tasks workers are allowed to select.
In addition, Amazon has built qualification testing into the Turk system. Requesters can create and then administer language or visual skill tests that workers must pass before granting access to HITs. For example, to be allowed to translate business letters from Japanese, you might need to score an 85% on a translation quiz. Only qualified translators could work on those hits.
Other qualifications are simpler. They ask you to opt in to the qualification at a basic level, so the requester can keep track of your work. This way, as you do good work, your qualification increases to reflect this. Keep track of your assigned hits and earned qualifications on the outstanding hits and current qualifications pages.
THE BIG PICTURE
After all is said and done, Mechanical Turk isn’t going to make anyone (except, perhaps, its founders and the businesses who use it) into millionaires. If the wages are too low for your comfort zone, no one’s forcing you to work.
However, if you’re retired, a college student, or a stay-at-home parent it may offer you a way to earn a few bucks towards the purchase of your next book or DVD. There’s no travel expenses involved and you can get started from the comfort of your armchair.
As Amazon moves out of Beta and into the big time, the quantity and variety of the work on-offer is sure to increase. I’m curious to know what kind of solution’s it will be providing on the horizon.
QUICK FACTS
- Mechanical Turk is named after a famous 18th Century hoax where a chess-master was hidden in a fake “automated” chess playing machine. You’re the modern-day equivalent of that chess-master, providing “artificial artificial intelligence”.
- To join Mechanical Turk, you need to be over 18 years of age and have an Amazon account. You need not be a US citizen to participate.
- You can cash out your money either directly to your bank or to an Amazon Gift Certificate.
I don't know where the author got the idea that there were lots of ~$0.75 tasks. There never were; the original tasks were all 1-3 cents. Some people have tested other tasks, but it's not like there were market forces driving the price down, it started low.
The author got the idea from doing the 75cent tasks herself. These were the first tasks posted and involved doing product writeups for Amazon.
Just because something is voluntary, that does not mean it isn't exploitative. It's also very misleading to leave the "labor union" question unanswered. There's no way a labor union would approve of this. This isn't a free market. The employers have more control over the system than the workers (that's why people believe in unions, because they help balance the power), giving the employers a greater capability to manipulate the market than the employees (you even point this out).
That said, I think it's an interesting idea. I doubt college students everywhere will now be buying that extra DVD or eating more than ramen noodles and going on vacations or anything, but... You know, try as I might, I can't really find an upside to this. This lowers the cost of labor, decreases the amount of work for the currently employed (if this takes off, expect people to be laid off as redundant). The only thing it does it make Amazon and their affiliates more efficient, which is good, but what good is it to me that Amazon is "efficient", if it means the average wages go down? An economy only works well when both capital and labor are healthy. I'm not sure the benefits to capital, in this case, justify the cost to labor, if this takes off. If it doesn't take off, if it remains a sort of niche where corporations can get a little extra work done, and people with not enough free time for part-time employment (like college students) can make a few extra bucks, then I think it's great (sort of like an ultra-efficient temp agency). We'll see. I don't mean to sound overly dour or preachy, just that this isn't some ultra-wonderful thing without potentially significant negative ramifications.
do they have a pension plan?
Excellent article. What would be interesting to examine is how much of the work is/will be done by those of other countries. Probably a lot of it will; if you live in a place where the average wage that you can make if you're one of the lucky employed ones is only a couple dollars a day then Mechanical Turk might raise your standard of living. Of course, some/many of the tasks will require some level of english speaking/writing capacity so that will limit it to some extent. Anyway, good article. Thanks!
Of course, if you live someplace where a day's wage if a few bucks you're probably going to have a computer and network connection.
re: alex,
Something can be exploitative only if choice is illusory. That is to say, if the choice is between A, B, and nothing, choice is illusory if A and B are equivalent. You can starve. You can work in a mine for $5 per week. Or you can work in a sweat shop for $5 per week... that's no choice at all.
In the case of MTurk, no one is going to quit their jobs to do that full time—they couldn't. But if MTurk is their ONLY option for employment, and they need it to live, their problems are not only severe, but also completely unrelated to whether amazon is "exploiting" them.
If something like this got unionized, like as not these jobs would get dumped on someone who's salaried and can be relied on to stay late to finish them—or they wouldn't get done at all. Union scale would strangle the whole field.
MTurk "workers" have the option simply not to do the work. If no one were willing to do it at these rates, the rates would go up. That makes it a free-market situation.
As for "If it doesn't take off," it can perfectly well take off and not exploit anyone. College students looking for a little extra cash, people with regular jobs who are bored with evening tv, senior citizens bored with golfing... how many of those are there sitting idle in this country tonight?
As for more complex tasks—things that you might pay someone a livable amount for—you might get them done this way, but at these rates, they won't be done well. Take the example japanese translation. You'll probably get an adequate translation if you put a proficiency test in. But you won't get a high quality translation. Nor will you get an elegant one. Imagine the results if you tried to contract graphic design work this way!
Unionizing something like this would be a bit like requiring crash helmets of people sitting in parked cars.
I have to agree with the first commenter Scott that you're not quite on target about the market forces driving the prices down on hits. Your article makes it sound like the original $0.75 hits moved down in price to $0.03 a hit, which is not what happened. The product writeup hits moved down in price some, but then disappeared for the most part, being replaced by enourmous quantities of Image Adjustment and Music hits, which took much less time to finish and paid a lot less.
I understand the concerns about labor costs "racing to the bottom," but this system is likely to attract new types of piecework that simply can't be done economically. In any case, there will more that just a "yes or no" choice for workers. Some other company will step-up, implementing a similar system with a higher floor (say, 5 cents). The best workers will migrate to that, and then labor rates will stabilize at a level that everyone (US, web-enabled India, *everyone*) will find acceptable.
In the case of MTurk, no one is going to quit their jobs to do that full time--they couldn't. But if MTurk is their ONLY option for employment, and they need it to live, their problems are not only severe, but also completely unrelated to whether amazon is "exploiting" them.
If someone has, say, spina bifida, and can't get to a job and work. They might want to take this MTurk job. This job pays very little. Just because it might be this person's only option doesn't mean one can't abuse their vulnerabilities.
Imagine that a man has skills as a computer programmer but made a mistake and has a federal arrest record. Would it not be exploitive to offer him a lesser salary than his skills should command because he is less capable of getting a different job? You aren't forcing him to take the job, you aren't forcing him not to take the job, but if the job is the only one available he might agree to it. That doesn't mean you haven't exploited his situation.
I expect, however, that "exploitation" may have some specific legal meaning that I don't quite grasp.
However, as a personal example, if I might. My wife has Cerebral Palsey and she doesn't drive. Because it is important for her self esteeme that she work, I get in the car and drive 30 minutes to take her to work after I get home from my own work. I then return home (30 minutes). I wait for an hour and a half. I drive half an hour to go get her. I bring her home.
I drive 2 hours so my wife can work 3. This is not exploitation. (Financially unwise, perhaps.) The employer doesn't get anything extra on account of my wife's special limitations. However, if the employer were to offer her a lower salary.. well, that would be wrong and.. in my eyes, "exploitative".
Essentially, this job is broadcasting a very low effective hourly wage and will be culling in people who accept this because of limiting life situations (whatever they may be). Because of their limited life situation, they are offered a job which pays less than the federal minimum wage. The people offering the job are, then, taking advantage of these limited life situations in order to get the job done for less than what would otherwise be a 'fair wage' for traditional jobs. I can certainly see how that could be percieved as exploitative.
Your mileage may vary and I respect that.
does anyone know how much the hourly wage is to work in one of amazon's fulfillment centers? I would love to find out?
robert-- aplayfulmind@aol.com
How many amazon managers are working for 15ยข an hour? Many, I'm sure.
I notice many of the "rewards" are $0.00 Please address that. Why would anyone in their right mind sign up for that? Or does $0.00 mean something like "We'll figure out what to pay you later?"
seems like straight up bullllshit