Definition
Plain language
An online platform where researchers pay real people small amounts to take surveys and experiments.
As stated in the literature
A participant-recruitment service for online behavioral studies; used by the AutoCog pipeline to autonomously recruit and pay human subjects for AI-designed psychology experiments.
Why it matters: It gives an automated research pipeline direct access to real human participants, so AI-designed experiments can be tested on people rather than just simulated.
For example, a study designed by an AI can be posted there and have dozens of real people paid small amounts to complete it within hours.
Heard on the show
“… hundred and fifty total, each paid eighty cents for a six-to-eight-minute task, all recruited through Prolific, with zero researcher intervention between proposing an experiment and revising a theory. …”Episode 176 — An AI Designed Its Own Psychology Studies, Then Confirmed What It Found