Briefs

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 4, 2005, By Kristen Millares Bolt

Amazon.com has launched a new program called Amazon Mechanical Turk, through which a computer can ask humans to perform tasks that it can’t do itself.

The name Mechanical Turk dates back to 1769, when a Hungarian nobleman created a wooden robot-like mannequin that could play chess -- even defeating chess fanatic Benjamin Franklin in Paris.

With Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon plans to supply "artificial artificial intelligence" that connect programs needing the human touch with humans, such as the simple task of identifying objects in photographs (which humans can do better than computers). Examples of what humans can do for computers? Evaluate beauty, translate text and find specific objects in photos.

For more information, visit www.mturk.com.