Amazon service Bezos once called 'artificial artificial intelligence' is shutting down
Amazon is shutting down Mechanical Turk, the 21-year-old human-labor platform that powered AI training data collection.
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.
The key facts
9 to knowMechanical 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
Go to the source
CNBC Technologycnbc.com
Publisher excerpt: Mechanical Turk launched in 2005 as a way to farm out tasks that are easy for humans to complete but too challenging for computers.