Named after a famous 18th-century chess-playing "automaton" that secretly concealed a human operator, now used to describe any system that presents itself as automated while actually relying on hidden human labor — as well as, literally, a crowdsourced microtask platform of the same name.
REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
"Turned out the "AI" feature was basically a Mechanical Turk setup with real people answering behind the scenes."
LORE & ORIGIN
The original hoax dates to the 1770s; the phrase was revived specifically for the internet age once crowdsourced human-labor platforms and "fake AI" services made the same disguised-human-labor pattern relevant again.
EQUIVALENT CONCEPTS IN OTHER LANGUAGES
MENTIONS OVER TIME
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