The Mechanical Turk's Last Dance: A Eulogy for a Bygone Era of Automation In the early 2000s, Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) burst onto the scene as a revolutionary platform that promised to democratize work and provide a means for anyone with an internet connection to earn some cash.
Dubbed "artificial artificial intelligence" by founder Jeff Bezos, MTurk was hailed as a way to outsource mundane tasks to humans who could perform them faster and cheaper than machines.
However, beneath its utopian facade lay a more complex reality. Human workers toiled for minimal pay, performing tasks that were barely distinguishable from automation.