Fantastic piece of journalism from The Verge the bleakest corner of the gig economy. While the article is paywalled, it is a worthwile read.
More people need to know about the realities of this kind of work. I heard about this gig work by word of mouth but I had no idea it was this dark.
https://www.theverge.com/cs/features/877388/white-collar-workers-training-ai-mercor
In a nutshell, knowledge workers, in these temp jobs, are trading autonomy and a semblance of professional freedom, unless you somehow end up working directly for these AI training companies as an employee, for almost any kind of survival wage. Apparently, according to The Verge, you have to sign paperwork that prevents you from discussing any of the work that you did for that company or advertising that you had that job at all, so that you cannot use your experience working that job to get a new job elsewhere. That renders your ability to work a new job far more difficult depending of course on how long that job "gap" becomes. The bigger picture is that survival wage work in the gig economy is now just as much the domain of uber drivers and Dashers as it is PhDs and those with masters degrees, until of course these data companies no longer need the data to train their AI. Then these companies won't need any human AI trainers.
https://www.theverge.com/cs/features/877388/white-collar-workers-training-ai-mercor
In a nutshell, knowledge workers, in these temp jobs, are trading autonomy and a semblance of professional freedom, unless you somehow end up working directly for these AI training companies as an employee, for almost any kind of survival wage. Apparently, according to The Verge, you have to sign paperwork that prevents you from discussing any of the work that you did for that company or advertising that you had that job at all, so that you cannot use your experience working that job to get a new job elsewhere. That renders your ability to work a new job far more difficult depending of course on how long that job "gap" becomes. The bigger picture is that survival wage work in the gig economy is now just as much the domain of uber drivers and Dashers as it is PhDs and those with masters degrees, until of course these data companies no longer need the data to train their AI. Then these companies won't need any human AI trainers.
