WorkAugust 26, 2026via CNBC Technology
Amazon service Bezos once called 'artificial artificial intelligence' is shutting down
Why it matters
Mechanical Turk's closure signals a shift in how AI companies source training data and crowd labor — a workforce that has underpinned model development for two decades. The shutdown raises questions about what replaces human annotation in the AI supply chain.
Key signals
- Mechanical Turk launched in 2005
- Service described by Bezos as 'artificial artificial intelligence'
- Platform enabled task completion too hard for early AI systems
- Shutdown impacts workforce relying on gig annotation work
- Timing suggests shift in AI data-sourcing strategy (2026)
- Amazon Mechanical Turk launched in 2005
- Platform used for tasks too hard for computers but easy for humans
- Shutdown date not specified in article excerpt
- Long-standing infrastructure for RLHF and dataset labeling in AI pipeline
The hook
Amazon is shutting down Mechanical Turk, the 21-year-old human-labor platform that powered AI training data collection.
Mechanical Turk launched in 2005 as a way to farm out tasks that are easy for humans to complete but too challenging for computers.