Mechanical Turk Winds Down

The Signal · 2026-07-06

The platform that quietly built AI's brain is shutting its doors. Amazon will stop taking new customers for Mechanical Turk, the crowdsourcing service behind years of AI training data. Automation replaced the humans who trained the machines.

Also today: India's lack of AI stocks now shields its market from the swings hitting everyone.

Midjourney showed a behind-the-scenes video of its scanner but still hasn't proven it works.

Fanfiction writers are hunting AI authors, and unreliable detection tools are sparking false accusations.

Wealthy families are hiring AI tutors even as the wider public stays skeptical.

That's today's Signal. Thanks for watching.