AWS is shutting down Mechanical Turk, which let humans beat AI at certain work tasks

• Amazon will permanently close Mechanical Turk on September 30, 2026
• Mechanical Turk once connected more than 500,000 workers with paid tasks
• Workers completed image tagging, transcription, surveys, and other routine assignments

Amazon plans to permanently close Mechanical Turk, its long-running platform for outsourcing small tasks to human workers.

Launched in 2005, the platform enabled companies to hire people to complete small, routine tasks that computers could not easily handle at the time.

Jeff Bezos once summarized the concept with a phrase that stuck: "artificial artificial intelligence," in remarks about the platform.

A tool built to outsmart the limits of early computers

“We regularly evaluate our programs, tools and services and make adjustments based on those assessments,” a notice on the Mechanical Turk website said.

“Following an assessment, we’ve made the decision to close AWS Mechanical Turk, effective September 30, 2026.”

The platform's original name referenced a historical automaton that appeared...

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