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How AI Is Being Trained to Do Your Job

6/4/202622 min

There’s a new gig economy that involves training AI to do white collar jobs. And one company, Mercor, is leading the charge. The training startup hired 30,000 contractors just last year to help AI companies get their models trained up on sophisticated roles. Ryan Knutson spoke to one former Mercor contractor about the job and WSJ’s Katie Bindley lays out the tactics that have landed the startup in hot water. Further Listening: The ‘Class of AI’ Enters the Workforce AI Is Coming for Entry-Level Jobs Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Ryan Knutson· Host0:00

    [music] There's a new type of gig work that's growing rapidly right now. It involves talking to AI and teaching it how to do your job.

  2. Katie Bindley· Guest0:13

    There is this new sort of category of jobs that basically involve people sitting in front of a computer and helping to train AI to perform some of the things that they are, you know, experts in or what they used to do in their careers pretty much.

  3. Ryan Knutson· Host0:34

    Our colleague, Katie Bentley, covers tech, and she's been reporting on a startup that's doing this kind of work, and it's hiring like crazy. It's called Mercor.

  4. Katie Bindley· Guest0:45

    The best ways to sort of get insights about this type of work is to just look at the job postings that are available. They put out a gazillion postings on LinkedIn.

  5. Ryan Knutson· Host0:55

    Like, can we look at some of their LinkedIn posts?

  6. Katie Bindley· Guest0:57

    Ooh, let's. Okay. So you'll see tons of posts. "Start your month with work from home. Explore flexible remote opportunities with Mercor and work from anywhere. Apply here." It'll basically say, like, "We are looking to hire someone with experience as, you know, an investment banker or entry-level analyst or whatever," and it lays out specifically what they're looking for, and I think the idea is to help the AI perform the duties of those roles.

  7. Ryan Knutson· Host1:22

    Are they ever looking for podcast hosts?

  8. Katie Bindley· Guest1:25

    I've seen ones for, like, voice actors and stuff.

  9. Ryan Knutson· Host1:28

    Hmm.

  10. Katie Bindley· Guest1:28

    I mean, the range

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