Hybrid Assignment 07

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.

I believe that since the Mechanical Turk or Automation Chess Player was a so-called illusion to have one believe that they were playing the game of chess against the brains of a machine, that Ahyan Aytes explained the connection between the Mechanical Turk and  Amazon’s new Mechanical Turk as being an illusion that the machine is actually doing all of the work, when in fact there are people behind the work that are doing the job for the machine.  Since computers can’t perform certain tasks, it is the labor of man who actually does the work for the computer, while having the user believe that they are one against the machine, as the case with the Turk in the 18th century when it was believed by the user that they were playing chess with a machine that was smart enough to move the pieces across the board and win every time.  And as Aytes explained; “it may seem to your customers that your application is somehow using advanced artificial intelligence to accomplish tasks, but in reality is the Artificial Artificial Intelligence of the Mechanical Turk workforce”.  So, Aytes makes a valid point that the customer will believe in the machine and think that the machine is actually working for them, but in fact, it’s the machine that is being used as the work-horse while there is a human cracking the whip on the horse to push the and haul the material.

b

Comments are closed.