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A comment on Shortcomings of Amazon Mechanical Turk May Threaten Natural Language Generation. Parent comment

Re:Shortcomings of Amazon Mechanical Turk May Threaten Natur... by 01acheru on Saturday September 18, 2021 @10:34AM (#28576569)
The name “mechanical turk” comes from a fake chess-playing machine that hid a person inside of it, whom actually operated said machine. So I think the name is quite appropriate for this service.

Anyway, I don’t like that service either.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk

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Re:Shortcomings of Amazon Mechanical Turk May Threaten Natur... by klyrs on Saturday September 18, 2021 @12:18PM (#28577303)
I think GP knows that. The name is uncomfortable and it's honest. Which... kinda says something about the people using it for scientific research.
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Re:Shortcomings of Amazon Mechanical Turk May Threaten Natur... by 01acheru on Saturday September 18, 2021 @03:27PM (#28578576)
Why would it be uncomfortable? Those hidden inside the (original) machine were not exploited by the machine owner

edit: I see that wearywanderer explained what I mean as a sibling, that’s why I think GP didn’t get precisely what the MT was and how it was operated

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Re:Shortcomings of Amazon Mechanical Turk May Threaten Natur... by webmaven on Saturday September 18, 2021 @08:02PM (#28580487)
> Why would it be uncomfortable? Those hidden inside the (original) machine were not exploited by the machine owner

Do you have a source for that assertion? As far as I can tell, several of the chess players known to have operated the Turk had substance abuse (chiefly alcoholism), health, and money problems (the words 'debt', 'penniless', and 'destitute' come up a few times). While not proof of abuse, it does suggest a strategy of recruiting the vulnerable.

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Re:Shortcomings of Amazon Mechanical Turk May Threaten Natur... by 01acheru on Sunday September 19, 2021 @05:51AM (#28583023)
In late 1700 and early 1800 Europe being a heavy drinker, having some kind of health issue and/or being penniless were the norm for most of the population. If performing a task because of those issues means being exploited then we must assume that almost everyone in Europe at those times were exploited in one way or another.

I understand what you mean if we judge it from modern western standards, but I don’t agree if we judge it by the standards of that era.

It’s all a matter of context IMHO.

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Re:Shortcomings of Amazon Mechanical Turk May Threaten Natur... by asciident on Saturday September 18, 2021 @12:50PM (#28577552)
What does it say about people using it for research?
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