ChatGPT is Powered by These Contractors Making $15 an Hour
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all around us these days, from the devices we use to the apps we install in our smartphones. However, little is known about the hidden workforce behind this remarkable innovation. There is a group of contractors who work tirelessly behind the scenes to train AI systems to analyze data and generate text and images that make these products work better. This hidden army of workers has played a crucial role in ChatGPT, a popular generative AI that has taken the world by storm.
Alexej Savreux is one of the many contractors who have dedicated countless hours to training OpenAI's systems. Although he has done all kinds of work over the years, including fast-food service, custodial work, and live theatre sound work, he currently works as an artificial intelligence trainer, improving the accuracy of AI by labeling photos and making predictions about what text the apps should generate next. Savreux and his peers earn $15 an hour and up, with no benefits.
Savreux remarks that the job may not offer fame or riches, but it is essential and often overlooked in the field of AI. The seeming magic of the technological frontier has always overshadowed the labor of contract workers. However, the Partnership on AI, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that promotes research and education around AI, warns that a spike in data enrichment work is coming and calls for fair compensation and other impoved practices for workers.
Despite the challenges, AI contract work can provide opportunities for workers. Savreux, who works from home on a laptop, got into AI contracting after seeing an online job posting. He credits his current job with helping to pull him out of homelessness and notes that his work in AI gig work—along with a previous job at the sandwich chain Jimmy John's—represents "the necessary, entry-level area of machine learning."
Job postings for AI contractors often describe the allure of working in a cutting-edge industry and the value of the work. An advertisement from Invisible Technologies, a temp agency, for an “Advanced AI Data Trainer” notes that the job would be entry level with pay starting at $15 an hour, but also that it could be “beneficial to humanity.”
There's no definitive tally of how many contractors work for AI companies, but the number is increasing worldwide. Many companies have hired remote contractors to label data or train company software on computer engineering tasks. OpenAI, for instance, has hired around 1,000 remote contractors in places such as Eastern Europe and Latin America to label data or train company software on computer engineering tasks.
The work of creating data to train AI models isn’t always simple to do, but it's an attractive field for workers who want a sneak peek into where generative AI technology is headed in the near-term. Jatin Kumar, a 22-year-old in Austin, Texas, has been doing AI work on contract for a year since he graduated college with a degree in computer science, and he said it gives him a sneak peek into where generative AI technology is headed in the near-term. He’s also working on his own tech startup, Bonsai, which is making software to help people learn how to code.
ChatGPT's success is, in large part, due to the tireless work of these contractors, who receive little to no recognition for their contributions. The industry must take steps to recognize and value their contributions and provide fair compensation and benefits. Without their hard work, innovation in the AI industry would not be possible.
