Resistance is futile

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate "artificial, artificial intelligence" directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call: the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this artificial, artificial intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work.

[ Amazon Mechanical Turk ]

The 3 largest issues I see with this are:

1. Getting computers and internet connections in front of people who could make a living at these rates in the poorest of countries
2. Relying on this process for anything requiring a high level of QA
3. Handling the latency of the request if your HIT driven task become unfavorable

However, I can see the potential here, though I'm not sure what it has to do with Amazon, except that they already have the architecture to handle and route micropayments.

Oddly I found this via Seth Godin's blog, who thought it was a joke...