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Mechanical Turk Officially Closed Outside of the US (webpronews.com)
9 points by transburgh on Sept 13, 2007 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments



The title is misleading. MTurk requestors must have a US address. MTurk workers can be outside the US.


What a bunch of fools. But they have a pretty tight patent so it will be hard to operate in the same space as them.


eh...but their base claim is "comprising", but it's a business method and i fell asleep about half way through. i'm no patent attorney though. what makes you say it's tight?

patent: http://tinyurl.com/2lomvg

1. A method for a computer system to use human assistance in performing tasks, the method comprising: automatically and under control of a first computer system, causing a task to be performed by, identifying a first and a second subtask of the task, wherein the first subtask involves speech recognition; retrieving information about past quality of results of one or more humans when previously performing subtasks other than the first subtask; using the retrieved past quality information to facilitate performance of the first subtask by one or more humans, the facilitating of the performance of the first subtask including, identifying one or more required capabilities for performance of the first subtask; dispatching the first subtask to a remote second computer system of a first human for performance by the first human, the first human identified as being one of one or more humans who have capabilities that satisfy the required capabilities for the first subtask, the retrieved past quality information including past quality information for the first human when previously performing multiple subtasks other than the first subtask, the past quality information for the first human being at least part of the capabilities of the first human that satisfy the required capabilities for the first subtask; and receiving a first result from the first human via the second computer system, the first result generated by performance of the first subtask by the first human; providing payment to the first human for the performance of the first subtask; and generating a result for the task based at least in part on the first result.


Am I the only one who thought of the chess automaton and was disappointed?




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