Meet the Grunt Workers: Behind the Scenes of AI's Magical Frontier

As AI systems get popular, the hidden army of contract workers who analyze data and generate text and images are essential to training OpenAI's ChatGPT. These lower-skilled, lower-paid workers work on-demand nature with no benefits, and the pay is $15 an hour and up. These days, people employed by written contracts either directly by a company or through a third-party vendor that specializes in temp work or outsourcing. Benefits are rare or nonexistent. Lower costs for tech companies, and the work is usually anonymous, with all the credit going to tech startup executives and researchers. The Partnership on AI warned in a 2021 report that a spike in demand was coming for what it called "data enrichment work." In Nairobi, Kenya, more than 150 people who've worked on AI for Facebook, TikTok, and ChatGPT voted Monday to form a union, citing low pay and the mental toll of the work.