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Bots on Amazon's task service may be souring psych studies
It's not uncommon for scientists to use Amazon's Mechanical Turk for research -- they can quickly gather survey data in return for a small outlay to participants. Academics are quickly discovering the limits of the task service with the modern bot-happy internet, however. Numerous psychology researchers have reported a sharp rise in the number of junk responses to their questions, many of which appear to come from bots. The offenders not only spam nonsensical answers to questions (such as "nice" or "good"), but tend to originate from the same location. And while anti-bot measures like captchas are in use, they aren't always reliable.
Fake news sites are using Amazon to hire their writers
It appears that right wing websites that traffic in "alt-right" fake news are using Amazon's Mechanical Turk system to recruit writers to produce content for them. The Mechanical Turk platform is an "odd-job board" where companies can hire random folks from the internet to perform a variety of menial online tasks, like filling out surveys or transcribing audio. In this case, white supremacist outlet The Goldwater wants people to produce "news" articles for $5 a pop.
Microsoft attempts to teach computers how to make a funny
Computers and artificial intelligence systems have long struggled with a human understanding of humor – as anyone who has ever asked Siri to tell a joke well knows. Bloomberg reports that recently, a researcher at Microsoft began working with The New Yorker on a project that aims to teach an AI system what is and what is not "funny."
Amazon makes it more expensive to get people to do stuff for you
Mechanical Turk, Amazon's "human intelligence task" marketplace is about to get slightly more expensive. For the first time since 2005, the company is going to increase the cut it takes from each transaction, upping the figure from 10 to 20 percent. Amazon is justifying the change by saying that it'll use the extra cash that it raises to improve the service to the benefit of both requesters and workers. It's probably not going to go down too well with "Mechanical Turks" based in countries like India, who are effectively seeing their wages drop by 10 percent. As the Wall Street Journal reports, there's also plenty of consternation from one of the site's biggest customers: university researchers.
Amazon's Mechanical Turk workers want to be treated like humans
Amazon's Mechanical Turk service is all about using humans to perform computer-like tasks, such as identifying objects and transcribing videos. However, those workers are tired of being treated like automatons -- they've launched an email campaign urging Amazon chief Jeff Bezos to market Mechanical Turk staff as the humans they are. Ideally, they'd be treated as "skilled, flexible" people with real identities, not just as tools for time-conscious customers. They're hoping for a public response from Bezos, and also want to shake off stereotypes of Turkers as unskilled or working solely for "beer money."
Want to hijack people's PCs? Pay them a few cents
Apparently, hackers wanting to control PCs are wasting their time with elaborate botnets and vulnerability exploits -- all they may really need is some pocket change. A study found that between 22 to 43 percent of people were willing to install unknown software on their PCs in return for payments ranging from a penny to a dollar, even when their OS flagged the app as a potential threat that required permission to run. While you might think that respondents would naturally be a bit suspicious, that wasn't usually the case. As researcher Nicolas Christin notes, just 17 people out of 965 were running virtual machines that limited the possible damage; only one person went in fully expecting trouble, according to exit surveys.
OpenGlass uses Google Glass to identify objects for the visually impaired (video)
Dapper Vision's OpenGlass project sees Google Glass' camera as useful for more than just hands-free pictures -- it's a tool for interpreting the world around us. To show that potential, the two-person group has tested two of its Glass apps with visually impaired wearers. The first, Question-Answer, lets the poor-sighted ask both Mechanical Turk and Twitter for help in identifying objects. Memento, in turn, automatically recites notes when the user looks at a recognizable scene; it can warn users about dangerous equipment, for example. Dapper Vision tells us that the OpenGlass apps will stay in limited testing until Google lets developers offer Glassware to the general public, but the company isn't sitting still in the meantime. It's devising a way to reward Question-Answer contributors with BitCoins, and it will demonstrate new Glass-based augmented reality software next week.
DIY 'Descriptive Camera' captures images, prints out prose
Have you ever wished that cameras could capture not only an image of the scene in front of them, but also describe it to you in plain English? Ok, what if it bypassed the whole "photo" thing and just spit out a slip of paper with words on it? Well, if you're still interested, the impressive Matt Richardson (of Make fame) has a project right up your alley. The Descriptive Camera is a relatively simple device really. A Logitech webcam is connected to a BeagleBone dev board, which is in turn plugged into a thermal printer from Adafruit. Obviously, the tech required to analyze a scene recognize the objects then convert that pile of pixels into a slice prose is outside of the budget and capability of your average DIY project. So Matt turned instead to Mechanical Turk, Amazon's marketplace for HITs or Human Intelligence Tasks. Images captured by the cam are uploaded via the BeagleBone, where an actual person describes what he or she sees and the resulting literature is printed out. For more details and images check out the source.
Belkin pleads for mercy over paid Amazon reviews deception
Remember how Michael Bayard, a Belkin Business Development representative, was apparently hiring people from Mechanical Turk to post glowing reviews of Belkin products on Amazon and elsewhere? Well, we just received an apologetic letter tucked firmly between the quaking legs of Mark Reynoso, President of Belkin -- a man clearly fearful of a consumer backlash. Reynoso expressed "surprise and dismay" that one of his employees "may have" (er hem, may have?) invited positive reviews for payment. While Belkin isn't admitting fault, it's at least taking responsibility to "re-instill trust" through the following actions:"We've acted swiftly to remove all associated postings from the Mechanical Turk system. We're working closely with our online channel partners to ensure that any reviews that may have been placed due to these postings have been removed."Hit the read link for the full, ethical grovel.
Belkin rep hiring folks to write fake reviews on Amazon?
Back in our day, if you weren't busy walking up uphill both ways, you'd write your own dang fake reviews on Amazon, but apparently Belkin's Michael Bayard -- or a clever impostor looking to smear the man's good name -- decided it'd be easier and totally non-obvious to hire people on Mechanical Turk to do it for him. For a whopping $0.65 cents you can write a 5 out of 5 review of a Belkin product, and downrank negative reviews while you're at it. Michael Bayard is a Business Development Representative at Belkin, and seems to have pulled the Mechanical Turk posting, but the him and his company have yet to comment publicly. Say it ain't so, Mike!
