Artificial Artificial Intelligence

Amazon, popularly known for its vast web store, competitive pricing, and Kindle e-reader, has other venues of operations in different markets related to the Internet.  One market Amazon serves is the corporate market, where it provides other businesses with resources derived from the Internet.  During one of my E-commerce classes, I learned that Amazon actually runs a business called Amazon Mechanical Turk.

So what is Mechanical Turk?  Another name for this interesting business operation is Artificial Artificial Intelligence- in other words, fake artificial intelligence.  On the website, Amazon allows businesses to post up "HITs" or Human Intelligence Tasks, and anyone can go on the website and do these tasks and get paid.  Tasks range from having to find the best category for certain products to tasks such as identifying which picture is better.  The usual range of pay for each "HIT" is from a penny to 50 cents.  Amazon then compiles the data for the businesses and gives an average of the data acquired.  Companies are then able to then use this data to improve their business.  This Artificial Artificial Intelligence allows companies to accomplish what computers can not do, such as identifying the better picture or similar products.

It is interesting how Amazon began as a online bookstore growing into a big and successful player in Internet service and business.  Other than having a immensely popular web store and Mechanical Turk, they also provide servers and hosting options for businesses.