Mechanical Turk closes Sept 30: the human pipeline that built AI shuts down
Amazon's Mechanical Turk, the 21-year-old platform that paid humans pennies to label the data behind modern AI, is closing September 30. The official notice on MTurk's FAQ confirms the shutdown after Amazon stopped accepting new customers in July. The irony is complete: a 2023 study found up to 46% of turkers were already secretly using AI to do their tasks. The workforce that built AI has been outbuilt by it.