Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Hits


Everyday this new world becomes more and more strange. In a desperate search for a new job, I signed up for an amazon beta site called "Amazon Mechanical Turk- Artificial Artificial Intelligence." Its a site which aggregates different tasks, which employers have posted to the site. For example, an employer was looking for a 350-500 word document on Renting Limos. It paid $4.50. And after further investigation, and emersing myself in this web-based application for the better part of two hours, I had the distinct dizzying feeling of what must be like that of brainwashing. Although it could have something to with me coming down after having a massive cup of black coffee. But just in case you an interest in the same bizarre experience as I had, it will follow something like this: Sign up. Just like other sites, there are the formalities; giving your name, address, email, and password, and then a confirmation after setting up an account to receive payment for the "work" you do. At this point, you sign in under the "worker" link and you "find interesting tasks" searching for 'Hits' or "Human Intelligence Tasks" as Amazon has titled them. So at this point, you are scrolling through the different 'tasks' available, and you decide to pick, and I'm not kidding you here, "Write a romance novel of approximately 50,000 - 55,000 words, and be rewarded $20.00 to your Amazon Pay Account. Instructions for this Romance Novel? Must be original, and not computer generated. Godspeed.

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