Happiness in Virtual Slavery

We don't spend our spare time hanging out on Amazon.com, looking for new and crazy stuff they sell. So it took a Salon.com article to draw our attention to Amazon's unique new marketplace: Mechanical Turk.

It was Salon's subhead that really caught our eye: "Is it a boon for the bored or a virtual sweatshop?" A virtual sweatshop? Here in Seattle? To the Mystery Machine!

Amazon's explanation of what Mechanical Turk is isn't nearly as exciting, except for the pithy phrase "artificial artificial intelligence." Basically, bored humans have the chance to earn pennies an hour doing tasks that computers aren't quite smart enough to do themselves.

And the site certainly doesn't match up to Salon's attempted drama injection. We started off searching for HITs (human intelligence tasks, a.k.a. shit you can do). Seattle pulled up 2 HITs. Edit? None. Write? Another strikeout.

Turned out that there were only 13 active HITs total when we were searching, so no wonder we couldn't find much. Restaurant verification, rank your top 3, survey verification -- yup, braindead tasks suitable for those bored at work or really looking for something to blog about.

We didn't sign up for anything -- we're too busy earning absolutely no pennies per hour trying to entertain you. But our curiosity is piqued. Is anyone out there part of turker nation? Let us know what you've been up to, and just how paltry your paycheck has been.