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.

Egypt: Disconnected/What if it Happened Here?

During the weeks of political unrest in Egypt, the Egyptian Prime Minister, Mubarak, was able to shut down all of its connections with the world.  Not only were they able to halt all telephone lines; the government was also able to stop all Internet communications.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Egypt relies on five major carriers for their telephone and Internet communications.  The government had enough power and influence to turn off all communications when its citizens began protesting.   This brings about the question: what if the U.S. government was able to shut down all of its communications from the rest of the world?


If the U.S. government was able to shut off all Internet communications, much of our nation's economy would dwindle as e-commerce and online retail sales are projected to reach to $197 billion in 2011.  E-commerce has grown rapidly, replacing many brick and mortar stores through mainly from the appeal of convenience and competitive prices.  Many day to day operations of businesses that rely on Internet connectivity, such as shipment notifications and online banking, would halt and would result in problems for the entire nation.  The U.S. government could technically shut off some of the Internet by ordering the top Internet providers to do so.  However, there are thousands of smaller Internet providers, making it difficult to shut down Internet access entirely in the U.S.  Our government's system of checks and balances would also prevent any authoritarian shut down of the Internet.  It would be really difficult for the U.S. to shut down all communications in the country.

More Info: CS Monitor, Telegraph