You Could Be Next

Katya, a freelance journalist turned content marketer, was recruited by Mercor to create training data for AI models by writing chatbot prompts and responses, work she initially enjoyed but which was abruptly canceled without warning. The article describes how machine learning (AI systems that improve by finding patterns in large amounts of data) relies on thousands of humans hired to generate and grade training examples, but gig workers like Katya face sudden project cancellations and job instability in this emerging industry.