å October 2015

In Return of the Crowds, Aytes compares Amazon’s crowdsourcing platform, Mechanical Turk, to the Automaton Chess Player also known as “Mechanical Turk” or the “Turk,” that was constructed in the late eighteenth century by Wolfgang von Kempelen and was a popular attraction in Europe. It is easy to comprehend why Amazon chose to name its digital labor market after the chess-playing machine.

The “Turk” was a life-size model, dressed in traditional Turkish garb that appeared to be a formidable chess-playing machine. The presenters of the “Turk” toured Europe challenging opponents to try to beat the automaton that would often win matches against the (human) players. Like a magician, the presenter would make a point of showing the audience that the cabinet under the desk the ‘Turk” sat at was filled with only machinery, as he spun the cabinet around, opening doors. In fact it was all an illusion and there was a chess master hidden inside the desk controlling the chess pieces with the help of magnets and string.

In Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, humans are used to perform Human Intelligence Tasks (HITS) that computers cannot easily do. Amazon turned to humans when its attempt at using artificial intelligence failed at certain tasks. There were some things that the computer could not accomplish – they required human intelligence. But while human beings are performing these tasks, they are “hidden” in a sense, behind the machine, much like the chess player was hidden in the cabinet. The workers (known as “Turkers”) are paid ridiculously small amounts of money per task and they have no direct contact with the “requesters” for whom they are completing the tasks. Amazon promises its clients an online workforce that will make their companies appear brilliant, while the Turkers, like the chess master, stay virtually invisible as they are “pulling the strings.”

Besides the extremely low pay associated with each HIT, Turkers are not even guaranteed to be paid that .01 or .10 agreed upon fee after they complete the task. The requester can accept or reject the work and still keep the rejected work, profiting from it but not paying the worker. Besides not receiving payment, the Turker will receive a lower online rating, making it more difficult to get more work. So the Turker is invisible in more ways than one. The public is made to think that they are dealing with a sophisticated computerized program while the invisible Turkers are working for pennies behind the scenes to maintain the illusion for the companies that utilize Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

In the reading of “Return to the Crowds”, by Ahyan Aytes, she makes a clear comparison on how things have shifted since that century, but somehow it still remains the same. The automaton Chess player exposes the ideal that artificial intelligence is not enough and is dependent; behind that magnificent player was always someone behind. Moreover, behind Amazon’s platform it is obvious that this systems would not operate if human nature, cognition were not involved. The power of knowledge from individuals is necessary, and the same way Automaton Chess Player operated many years ago still is adapted, “HIT”; meaning, that “ machine denoted a particular type of subjectivity because of the nature of the actors and their limited set of behaviors that are strictly defined within a set of rules in the game of chess”(85). “HIT”  is necessary  for many of this technological platforms. She explains how human intelligence is fundamental. Amazon’s turk, is a form of crowdsource where the work must follow few steps where “HIT” is necessary “human intelligence – humans behaving like machines behaving like humans” and both are combined and are able to create artificial artificial intelligence. In this form of crowdsourcing, things like transcribing audio, tagging videos or content, surveys and psychological evaluations, etc. Also, what I understand is that there are key pieces that are the ones that allow this platform to work and without them it would not be able to function. They are necessary and fundamental in order to work. “If the digital network is the assembly line of cognitive labor, then the Mechanical Turk is its model apparatus. As the network shifts the object of control from the bodies to the collective mind, the Mechanical Turk achieves this objective by foreclosing the mode of collective cultural production to cognitive workers and confining them within the legislative, temporal, and cultural states of exception”.

To understand the connection Ahyan Aytes makes between Mechanical Turk and the 18th-century automaton chess player, first it is imperative to note that Wolfgang von Kempelen’s Automaton Chess Player was not, to use Edgar Allen Poe’s term, a “pure machine,” rather the choices of the automaton were controlled by Kempelen’s living assistant. The automaton’s dependence on human intelligence to operate is the model behind Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. At the automaton’s introduction it was understood to be teachable and under control of its human owner, but it was also a technology that people did not fully understand, in-between thinking of it as a living being and not fully grasping a machine operating when presented with variables. Even the use of the automaton to use the game of chess, it was understood that the finite number of chess moves could be made into code to control mechanics. Through its ability to make human thought like a machine and machine operate like human thought, it had great potential for the future in an industrial cognitive capitalism, in which Amazon later embraced.

If the automaton could make human decisions, a commodity that had always solely belonged to humans until that point, numerous machines operating to replace the need for human thought would decrease the value of the human thought and human action. This, through Amazon’s crowdsourcing platform of Mechanical Turk is exactly what happened. By exploiting labor laws by crossing global boarders and spreading thin the tasks of large jobs through the efforts of thousands of human workers, the work is disguised as if it were done solely by automation (like Kempelen’s Automaton), though truly done by people. The workers now are paid pennies for their unreplicatable (but easily replaceable) efforts. This is the connection Aytes makes between the automaton and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

In return of the crowds, Aytes compares Amazon’s micropayment based crowdsourcing platform by comparing it to an 18th Century Automaton Chess Player. Crowdsourcing platforms utilize the public to complete business related tasks that it would ordinarily do for itself. Aytes tries to get us to think about how this has replaced traditional forms of employment. While the labor may not always be free, it still costs less than paying a traditional employee, hence the appeal to corporations. She uses the example of an Indian Human Intelligence Task worker (HIT) and how he made only $572 for 10,000 HIT’s despite having a 98.2% approval rate. While many may argue that he could choose not to do the job, they are overlooking the fact that the corporations target poorer countries so that people are more inclined to do the job for a meager compensation. Aytes states “U.S based Turkers oppose exploitation claims and state their interest in Mechanical Turk is solely motivated by the novelty of the experience. This fact could be explained through the seemingly negligible amount of income that can be earned through AMT for a U.S. based worker.” Crowdsourcing therefore has more benefits for U.S. workers than for those outsourced from other countries.
Aytes also touches on the fact that these workers from other countries are sometimes forced to work much more hours than the typical U.S worker. For example, in Germany, German “guest workers” were expected to work 80 hour work weeks in order to supply the labor needs for post war Germany. These guest workers were paid less than domestic workers and were exploited outside of normal legislations, rights and union protections. All this is done to exploit time zone differences so that businesses can have the needs of their company met 24/7.
The connection Aytes is trying to make to the reader is that both systems are similar. In the Chess Player example, the audience is deceived into believing that there is a sophisticated mechanism capable of playing chess against humans, when in fact it is a person controlling the mechanism. In crowdsourcing, we often think we are dealing with an intelligent computerized program, when in fact there is a person working behind the scene to meet our needs. These businesses want us to believe that technology has advanced to a place where infinite amount of things can be done by a computer program, but it is in fact a deception because there is always a human manpower working to make these things happen.

Ayhan Aytes’ explanation of’ Amazon’s Mechanical Turk by its comparison to the 18th-century Automaton Chess Player, was quite clear – the crowd doesn’t see all the work the people who work for these big, multinational powerhouse crowdsourcing apparatus, rather the false image that has come to be the comfortable and familiar way of interacting with the apparatus, that you don’t see them working furiously behind the scenes.

Immediately, this reminded of the Wiz (or the Wizard of Oz, too); where Richard Pryor is this frail looking man, though to be this great, magnificent power.  He sits way atop his skyscraper, hidden away from everyone else and working furiously behind the scenes, operating the machine by buttons and levers. inside the big head (that is in his audience chamber as his public face).  He does all of this to maintain the personification of what the people believe him to be – though it is all a facade.

the truth is that, these crowdsourcing apparati are intricately linked to the multitudes that offer bit intellectual labor.  The apparatus could not exist without this very type of relationship.  It makes the illusion of effortlessness possible.  The mechanical mind that people see as the power of the Mechanical Turk, is not mechanical at all, rather it is the intellectual power and labor of all the intellectual workers supporting the machine.  Humanity has had a long standing attraction to the idea of the autonomous mechanical mind, but the realization of a viable automated intelligence still has not become a functioning reality, but this frame work seems to be slow falling into place through the crowdsourcing apparatus – a psuedo artifical intelligence, powered by the human element.

The connection Aytes wants to make between a chess playing machine and Amazon.com’s new digital labor market, Mechanical Turk, is that both the human component (the mind) and technology itself are very intertwined.

Amazon moved to the Mechanical Turk due to the fact that it’s technology could not find “duplicate product pages on its retail website” and needed the cognitive labor. The Turk mannequin that Wolfgang von Kempelen created was an attempt at technology competing against actual human opponents in serious chess matches. The “technology” ended up being his chess master assistant.

With both, the most important aspect is knowledge. There are certain tasks that only humans can perform, but if somehow humans can manipulate technology to perform these tasks then in the long run it’s for the best. In her article, she talks about how “mechanisms were also living beings.” This intertwining of both technology and the human component, more specifically the human mind, makes me believe that one cannot exist without the other. Humans are the ones that created technology and although some of the world’s brightest minds (Musk and Hawking to name a few) believe that artificial intelligence will be an issue for us in the future, all of that could not be possible if it was not for the human component.

This article seems to say that technology is part of the evolution process of the human mind. With the Turk, Kempelen’s chess master assistant was the actual computer or technology that dealt with coded actions and each chess piece assigned a role that had a limited power. This is very similar to the technology that Amazon.com created in the AMT (Amazon Mechanical Turk) as technology can only do so much and there needs to be a human component. The human component and technology are supported by knowledge and has become more and more intertwined with all the new technology in our time. Their functions are used in almost every facet of our everyday life and will continue to do so.

Subcultures are basically branches of one main culture with addition of different adaptions according to different environment and lifestyles and etc. I believe that capitalism and subcultures can’t really exist without one and the other, capitalism needs subcultures to grow bigger and powerful and subcultures need capitalism to put their existence out there.

For example, there’s this artist from South Asia, whose songs reaches the soul and I’m madly in love with his music. Before he became so popular, I was able to get a concert ticket for an affordable price, sit in the front, get to meet, chat and take pictures with him. Now, that half of the world knows him, and music is known worldwide, I’ll be lucky to find a concert ticket for $400 for a seat somewhere in the middle. I still love his music but I was much happier when he he wasn’t so popular and I was able to enjoy his live concerts to the fullest. It’s all great for the artist, and the sponsors but not so great for people like me who loves the live concert experience.

Due by midnight Tuesday, October 27th (300-350 words).

In “Return to the Crowds,” Ahyan Aytes explains the source for Amazon.com’s micropayment-based crowdsourcing platform called the Mechanical Turk: from an 18th-century Automaton Chess Player. In your own words, explain the connection Aytes wants to make between a chess-playing machine and Amazon’s new platform.

Terranova characterizes the relationship of subcultural movements to capitalism as being intertwined. Subcultures are usually defined as a “cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture.” (Oxford English Dictionary) Although they may be intertwined I do agree with Terranova that such movements are not appropriated by capital from the outside.

In Terranova’s article she explains how the subcultural movements and capitalism are intertwined by saying “this has often happened through the active participation of subcultural members in the production of cultural goods (e.g., independent labels in music, small designer shops in fashion).” (2015:53) The subcultural movement is fueled by the digital economy and allows those who have access to content or use distribution networks to actually make these subcultural members part of the capitalistic process.

When I think of subcultural movements it makes me think of small businesses and independent contractors.  One such business practice that I find interesting and does not appropriate capital from the outside are sneaker resellers. The reselling of sneakers has become a billion dollar industry and in no way do they get capital appropriated from the outside. Granted, you must first purchase the sneaker itself which helps to stuff “the pockets of multinational capitalism” but all of the profits from reselling the sneaker goes right into the pocket of these subcultural members. What’s remarkable about this subculture is how young its members are. There are kids in their tweens all the way up to their late 40’s who comprise this subculture.

Again, I do believe that Terranova was right when she said that such movements are not appropriated by capital from the outside. A lot of times when small businesses open up they do so because these subcultural members don’t want to directly work for or deal with huge corporations. The digital economy has paved the way for more people to profit at a smaller scale.