Web - Amazon Mechanical Turk

I am still not getting over the fact that it is only today that I "discovered" Amazon Mechanical Turk. Totally unacceptable!

As described on the website:
"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 service to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications.

For software developers, the Amazon Mechanical Turk web service solves the problem of building applications that until now have not worked well because they lack human intelligence. Humans are much more effective than computers at solving some types of problems, like finding specific objects in pictures, evaluating beauty, or translating text. The Amazon Mechanical Turk web service gives developers a programmable interface to a network of humans to solve these kinds of problems and incorporate this human intelligence into their applications."

In a nutshell, developers and businesses can submit requests for tasks (referred as HITs - Human Intelligence Tasks) to be completed by a pool of skilled/talented people who are paid for completing the required tasks.

I find it to be a very interesting concept.
Read more about it here.