Launched in 2005, Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) supplies crowdworkers with ad hoc Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), frequently leveraged by machine learning researchers in the context of 'affordable' study groups for tasks such as image recognition, Natural Language Processing (NLP) evaluation, and other systematic, programmatic tasks designed to help formulate or test algorithms (though the service is also extensively used to generate spam).
Invisible Labor on MTurk
The authors note that they have rounded down all estimates in their methodological findings in order to ensure a rigorously 'conservative' approach to the work, and to avoid accusations of exaggeration of findings. They conclude:
The State of Mechanical Turk Workers
Other authors and organizations estimate that the average AMT worker actually earns less even than is estimated in the new report – as little as $1 an hour.
Since AMT workers are considered to be independent contractors, they are not commonly covered by labor laws in the US. In a 2016 survey by the Pew Research center, more than half of AMT workers (52%) reported making less than $4.99 an hour, which – assuming full-time work with no holidays or sick leave – is equivalent to an income of $10,379.20 a year.
However, turkers were, according to the survey, generally better-educated than average American workers, with 51% reporting that they have at least a college degree, against 36% of adult workers in the US – with only 12% of AMT workers claiming to only have a high school degree or less.
It also notes research from an earlier (2014) study, which indicated that AMT workers are subject to so many experiments and surveys that the quantity of this type of work 'could condition the workers to certain types of answers or have them become overly familiar with the types of questions they will be asked' – effectively, that the grind of AMT work will incline turkers to become experts at 'pleasing the system' rather than providing authentic and academically (or even clinically) useful input.
designer bags cyber monday
privacy policyaccept