Mechanical Turk was built to supply the “human intelligence” computers could not provide. After 21 years, Amazon is shutting it down as that boundary becomes increasingly difficult to define.
Amazon Web Services said Mechanical Turk will permanently close Sept. 30, 2026, giving workers and businesses a little more than a month to move away from the platform. AWS did not provide a specific reason for the closure.
The shutdown follows Amazon’s July decision to stop accepting new Mechanical Turk customers and comes as AI systems take over some of the simple data tasks the platform once relied on humans to perform.
The human workforce behind AI
Launched in 2005, Mechanical Turk connected businesses and researchers with workers completing small “Human Intelligence Tasks,” or HITs. Jobs included data labeling, transcription, surveys, research, content moderation and product categorization, often for only a few cents per task.
The platform eventually became an important…
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-amazon-mechanical-turk-shutdown/
