Andy Baio's "Faces of Mechanical Turk"

Mechanical Turk is Amazon's new service where you can post a task you want completed, along with the amount you'll pay for it, and folks will do it--Amazon calls it "artificial artificial intelligence." The service is named after an 18th century chess machine hoax.

Andy Baio decided to post a task for the mechanical turkers to reveal their faces. Here's his request:

Upload a photo of yourself holding a handwritten sign that says "I Turk for ...", filling out why you turk. For example, "I Turk for Cash," "I Turk for My Kids," "I Turk to Kill Time," or whatever else you like. Be honest, be funny, be whatever you like.

As a good faith gesture, here's my photo.

If you have a webcam, you can simply go to Cameroid to snap a photo from your web browser, download the JPG, and upload it below. (Don't worry if the text is backwards, I can fix that myself.) DON'T provide any identifiable information, like your name or email, since that's a violation of MTurk policy.

The result will be used in a collage that can be found on my personal weblog, http://waxy.org. By uploading your image and accepting payment for the image, you give permission to me, Andy Baio, to use your image in all forms and media for any lawful purposes. (That's just cover-my-ass language. I'm almost certainly only going to restrict it to this one project.) The collage will show up there shortly after the HIT is complete. Thanks, everybody!

Baio originally offered $0.05, but then raised it to $0.25 and finally to $0.50.

Click here to read what Baio says about the project.