#Mercor says it was hit by #cyberattack tied to compromise of #OpenSource #LiteLLM project

https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/31/mercor-says-it-was-hit-by-cyberattack-tied-to-compromise-of-open-source-litellm-project/

#cybersecurity #AI

Mercor says it was hit by cyberattack tied to compromise LiteLLM

https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/31/mercor-says-it-was-hit-by-cyberattack-tied-to-compromise-of-open-source-litellm-project/

#HackerNews #Mercor #Cyberattack #LiteLLM #OpenSource #Security #TechNews

How to become a billionaire in the AI era

https://medium.com/@sensmedia.srl/how-to-become-a-billionaire-in-the-ai-era-32d26274e868
#ai #artificialintelligence #aieconomy #nvidia #lovable #google #microsoft #meta #chatgpt #aiagents #github #automation #claude #gemeni #stanford #frontdesk #midjourney #mercor

"There are no objective tests for whether financial analysis or advertising copy is “good.” Undeterred, AI companies set out to make such tests, collectively paying billions of dollars to professionals of all types to write exacting and comprehensive criteria for a job well done. Mercor, the company Katya stumbled upon, was founded in 2023 by three then-19-year-olds from the Bay Area, Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, as a jobs platform that used AI interviews to match overseas engineers with tech companies. The company received so many inquiries from AI developers seeking professionals to produce training data that it decided to adapt. Last year, Mercor was valued at $10 billion, making its trio of founders the world’s youngest self-made billionaires. OpenAI has been a client; so has Anthropic.

Each of these data companies touts its stable of pedigreed experts. Mercor says around 30,000 professionals work on its platform each week, while Scale AI claims to have more than 700,000 “M.A.’s, Ph.D.’s, and college graduates.” Surge AI advertises its Supreme Court litigators, McKinsey principals, and platinum recording artists. These companies are hiring people with experience in law, finance, and coding, all areas where AI is making rapid inroads. But they’re also hiring people to produce data for practically any job you can imagine. Job listings seek chefs, management consultants, wildlife-conservation scientists, archivists, private investigators, police sergeants, reporters, teachers, and rental-counter clerks. One recent job ad called for experts in “North American early to mid-teen humor” who can, among other requirements, “explain humor using clear, logical language, including references to North American slang, trends, and social norms.” It is, as one industry veteran put it, the largest harvesting of human expertise ever attempted."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/white-collar-workers-training-ai.html

#AI #GenerativeAI #Mercor #OpenAI #Anthropic #AITraining #Automation #MassUnemployment

“few other human activities offer such unambiguous feedback. There are no objective tests for whether financial analysis or advertising copy is “good.” Undeterred, AI companies set out to make such tests, collectively paying billions of dollars to professionals of all types to write exacting and comprehensive criteria for a job well done.”

“… of the more than 30 workers I spoke with occupied a position along a vast and growing data-supply chain. There are people crafting #checklists that define a good #ChatbotResponse, typically called “#rubrics,” and other people grading those rubrics. Others #grade chatbot answers according to those rubrics, and still others take the rubrics and write out what’s often described as a “#GoldenOutput,” or the ideal chatbot answer.”

“Others are asked to explain every step they took to arrive at this golden output in the voice of a #chatbot thinking to itself, producing what’s called a “#ReasoningTrace” for #AI to follow later when it encounters a similar task out in the real world. Sometimes the labs want only rubrics for prompts their AI can’t already do, which means companies like #Mercor ask workers to produce “#stumpers,” or requests that will make the #AIModel fail.”

It’s not that AI will totally replace the expertise of #WhiteCollar PhD, Legal and other specialist professions. What will happen is that hard earned expertise will be priced lower. How low? As low as AI technology can make it, think Communist era pay.

#ZeroHourWork / #work / #economics / #SupplyDemand <http://theverge.com/cs/features/877388/white-collar-workers-training-ai-mercor> (paywall) / <https://archive.md/kAiZL>