Talk:Mechanical Turk

"Mechanical Turk" stylesheet

I've never seen such a thing for any other article. Feel free to ridicule it as the height of pretentiousness and pomposity. But I've found it useful.

• Referencing systems: Efn ("Notes") is used for information beyond identification of source(s). Sfn ("References", which in turn point to "Sources") is used to identify any source for which author's name/pseudonym is (author's names are) known. For sources for which the author can't be specified, citation templates are used directly within REF tags (and not via Sfn).
• Variety of English (lexicon, orthography, etc): "Oxford English".
• Rare/odd/mistaken/archaic spellings in quoted material: There aren't many, and they're easy to understand. They therefore have neither been regularized nor marked with "[sic]".
• Dates: DMY (not MDY) order
• Units: Metric, followed by US in parentheses. Quoting Units and dates: (But there's an exception for the dimensions of the cabinet, which we only know to the closest half-foot, and metric-first specification of which would be very awkward if we didn't want to risk misrepresenting the source.)
• Capitalization: Names and titles not in English are capitalized according to the conventions of the particular language. As for those in English: Institutions, book series titles, and book and periodical titles (and the titles of other works that are italicized) use "title case". (Exceptions: Nonce English titles for "trans-title".) Titles of articles and other works normally in quotation marks (as well as nonce English titles for "trans-title") use "sentence case".
• Surname of the second major exhibitor: Mälzel. Yes, Maelzel too was widely used (e.g. by Poe); quoted instances of it are not converted to "Mälzel". Also, in an Efn note, Mackenzie (1859) is quoted on the person he names "Maëlzel"; this has been preserved.
• ISBNs: I was sure I'd read (in the MoS?) that 10-digit ISBNs (and SBNs) should be converted to 13-digit, and therefore converted some (at isbn.org). But I now read: "if an older work only lists an ISBN-10, use that in citations instead of calculating an ISBN-13 for it". I haven't summoned the energy to work out which ISBNs need to be converted back.
• OCLC numbers: provided where there's no ISBN. (Where there is an ISBN, adding an OCLC number seems superfluous.)
• ISSNs: Not provided. I didn't notice any ambiguity that seemed to call for one.
• Ellipses are spaced. . . . unspaced. ...
• Dashes within sentences – like these – are spaced en dashes.
• In "Sources", authors and editors are linked to articles on them; locations and publishers are not.

But of course I don't "own" this article. Above is a list of choices made till now; perhaps some should be changed in the future. -- Hoary (talk) 07:53, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Our beloved MoS mandates unspaced ellipses. -- Hoary (talk) 22:10, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

Category confusion

The categorization of this article (and a number of others) seems confused. I've opened a discussion here within WT:Categorization. Take a look if you might be interested. -- Hoary (talk) 23:27, 12 December 2025 (UTC)

The National Theatre (so spelt)

The fire that destroyed the "automaton" started in the National Theatre (so spelt). Good (I think) US-published sources for this:

• Mitchell, "The last of a veteran chess player" (The Chess Monthly, New York, 1857), page 4: "The east roof of the National Theatre was a mass of whirling flames."
• Allen, "The history of the automaton chess-player in America" (in Fiske, The Book of the first American Chess Congress, New York, 1859), page 483: "a fire broke out in the National Theatre, at the corner of Ninth and Chestnut street"
• Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609–1884 (Philadelphia, 1884), volume 2, page 950: "the flames having been communicated from the National Theatre immediately north of it"

There's no need for "sic", either. Theaters/theatres in the US have commonly been named such-and-such Theatre, as will be obvious from a glance at Category:Former theatres in Manhattan or indeed Category:Theatres in Manhattan. -- Hoary (talk) 01:59, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

Agree. Ceoil (talk) 05:49, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Legacy: add modern usage of the name

I would like this article to include a section on the modern usage of the term, as seen in and . The old hoax has now become the general name for pretending to automate a task you actually delegate to unseen humans in the age of AI-everything-everywhere. I find this is a good example showing the lasting legacy of the device.

I would have made this edit myself, but considering this article is currently on the main page, I wanted to at least discuss it first. if there's interest, I can draft the paragraph here. ^{themoon@talk:~$} 09:43, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm interested, Themoonisacheese. Try drafting it here on the talk page. Keep it concise, and when you're fairly happy with it you might ping Ceoil, TenPoundHammer, Z1720 (names I've plucked from the fairly recent "FAR") and me for our comments. -- Hoary (talk) 00:39, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

=== As an expression ===

In modern usage, the phrase "mechanical turk" has come to be used to talk about any task that is purported to be achieved by a machine, generally using Artificial intelligence, but is in reality achieved by humans over the internet. It is also referenced in the name of Amazon Mechanical Turk, which can be used to delegate tasks too complex for computers to remote humans. ^{themoon@talk:~$} 08:53, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

References

Tweaked a little:

Extended content

=== Internet-based "mechanical Turks" ===

In the 21st century, the term "mechanical Turk" has come to be used for any internet-based system by which tasks may seem to be carried out by a machine (typically a computer using artificial intelligence) but in reality are carried out by humans. One such system is Amazon Mechanical Turk, which delegates to humans tasks too complex for computers.

References

I'm sure that this can be improved. (Ceoil, TenPoundHammer, Z1720, any comments?) -- Hoary (talk) 23:43, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

i'm not sure the second part is accurate, in the sense that amazon mechanical turk is unapologetically about this, while most examples do it to fake machine intelligence. to me, the 2 subjects are somewhat separated: on one side, the people perpetuating the grift much like the original machine, and on the other, amazon, which just uses the name as a reference but isn't trying to con anyone that a machine is doing the work. ^{themoon@talk:~$} 08:17, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

You make a good point, Themoonisacheese. I'll rethink (or try to) once I've properly woken up. -- Hoary (talk) 20:58, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Another try:

=== Internet-based "mechanical Turks" ===

In the 21st century, "mechanical Turk" has come to describe any internet-based system by which tasks may seem to be carried out by a machine (typically a computer using artificial intelligence) but in reality are carried out by humans. The company marketing the system may encourage the illusion of machine operation, journalists then debunking it and drawing a parallel with Kempelen and Mälzel's illusion; but Amazon describes its Amazon Mechanical Turk as delegating to humans tasks too complex for computers.

References

Incidentally, another two interesting articles:

• Schwartz, Oscar (22 April 2019). "Untold history of AI: How Amazon's Mechanical Turkers got squeezed inside the machine". IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved 2026-05-14.
• Solon, Olivia (6 July 2018). "The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work". The Guardian. Retrieved 2026-05-14.

-- Hoary (talk) 23:34, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

How about this:

=== Modern parallels to artificial intelligence ===

In the 21st century, "mechanical Turk" has come to describe internet-based systems by which tasks may seem to be carried out by a machine (typically a computer using artificial intelligence) but in reality are carried out by humans, much like Kempelen and Mälzel's illusion.

"Mechanical Turk" is also the name of a service by Amazon, Inc. which is openly described as delegating tasks too complex for computers to humans.

I'm not certain of the title, and also unclear if the wikilink on "service" is appropriate. the alternative was to link it on the quoted "mechanical turk". feedback welcome.

I'm not sure if we should include a brief paragraph about how the humans carrying out these tasks are overwhelmingly underpaid people in precarious situations and/or in third world countries. On one hand, it'd be a bit weird to omit it, but on the other we would now be quite a bit removed from the original subject. perhaps we could do something like "while the chess masters of the original machine were highly paid for their talent and secrecy, [modern humans in these positions] are often underpaid [etc]" ^{themoon@talk:~$} 12:09, 18 May 2026 (UTC)