The End of Mechanical Turk—and the Disappearing Humans Behind AI

For two decades, Amazon Mechanical Turk embodied one of technology’s least comfortable truths: many apparently intelligent systems begin with people performing small, repetitive tasks. Its reported closure does not mean that this labor is disappearing. More likely, it is moving behind thicker corporate walls. The marketplace that exposed the machinery [CNBC reports](https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiqAFBVV95cUxNeTRIUDBYQWZnU3dTSGNmb012T2VvcDYxOHhleFhhZmY0NUZJaEhJMlZFRTIyZzQ2d1JrS0ZLd3F5LTkwVXQyaElOWVhxRTdPZVhsT1BlOUFWekNranBlRWRGM0t2YnFvMjI2ZnphV2pzUFNXeWFWcmZMN1hFTkJoekFqNGZiQzNmWWRtSnF4UkJ3VG1Vek05VlM2WW51OVJJeFVwZkU4VW7SAa4BQVVfeXFMTnZiS2ZVSnIxeHozVFRvb2NVVFFPSFhtWjcwczVVMWxjV1h0dktFbHZsSUZrSWlNQmRBaHFtaXNMWGFyMDZKYUhSZTdsNVBpaUdqaGxPb05TeGJSdmRmRTRFYktBRjRKVUc2dHZiZ2FqWXRfZWJlb3RibzdtaHk1SXdFLUQ5SkZlVElTbUlGZUIzNk5lUElhbDRud0RPZlBlZy13S1BHVkV5eVItWk9R?oc=5) that Amazon is shutting down Mechanical Turk, the crowdsourcing service launched in 2005. The platform allowed organizations known as requesters to publish Human Intelligence Tasks, or HITs, which workers completed for payment. Those tasks ranged from surveys and transcription to image labeling, content moderation