I am doing my part to prevent robots from taking over
I became a mechanical turk on a whim. I had heard of it a few weeks before, but brushed it off as silly because of the small amount it seemed to pay. “Suckers,” I said to myself. I went back to my stack of diet soda and job applications. So many, many job applications. I wrote cover letter after cover letter, expanding minutia of graduate school tasks to the status of world changing events that occurred in the Manhattan Project or the Constitutional Congress. I may not be Jefferson or Edison, but did I know how to fill out a spreadsheet. I was frustrated by the rejections. I was frustrated by the lack of rejections. I spent my hours in solitude, twittering, reading, and watching television. And then, one day, I ran across turking again, in the wise words implanted in an email. Who wrote that email I’ll never know. I don’t think I deleted it, because I never delete emails. Maybe I dreamed the entire thing. Anyway. One description of mechanical turk mentioned how some tasks could not be completed without human interactions; robots could not do everything on the internet. I logged onto Amazon and signed up. I have since enjoyed earning some nice pocket change and I am doing my part to prevent robots from taking over. I have since advised others to join and we went to the movies with our hard earned money, money that will never go to robots, thank God. Viva Mechanical Turk!
