"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>

Today I learned that there is no option in LinkedIn's "Report advert" to report an illegal job.

#MinimumWage #Canada #Quebec #Montreal #HumanRights #Crime #Fraud #Online #Jobs #Recruitment #LinkedIn #Mercor #Abuse

202 Milliarden Dollar Risikokapital flossen 2025 in KI.

Das Ergebnis sind über 50 neue Milliardäre und eine Verschiebung des Fokus: Weg von Sprachmodellen, hin zu Enterprise Agents. Sierra AI wird mit 10 Milliarden bewertet, während Mercor-Gründer mit 22 Jahren Zuckerbergs Rekord brechen.

Führt diese Kapital-Konzentration zu echter Innovation oder nur zu aufgeblähten Bewertungen? #AI #Mercor #SierraAI
https://www.all-ai.de/news/news24/ki-reichtum-2025

AI로 돈 버는 곳은 따로 있다: 22세 창업자의 연매출 5억 달러 비밀

https://aisparkup.com/posts/7472

Wie KI Datenfirmen die Maschine füttern
Während alle über Rechenzentren sprechen, entsteht im Schatten eine neue KI-Infrastruktur: Datenfirmen, die Arbeitskräfte und Fachwissen in Trainingsdaten verwandeln. Und genau dort fließt derzeit viel Geld.

Der Markt wächst ra
https://www.apfeltalk.de/magazin/news/wie-ki-datenfirmen-die-maschine-fuettern/
#Feature #KI #News #Arbeitsmarkt #DataLabeling #HandshakeAI #KI #Mercor #Rechenzentren #RLHF #ScaleAI #Startups #SurgeAI #Trainingsdaten

Ba nhà sáng lập chỉ mới 22 tuổi đã đạt mức định giá 10 tỷ USD cho startup tuyển dụng AI Mercor, vươn lên trở thành những tỷ phú công nghệ tự thân trẻ nhất trong lịch sử – điều mà Mark Zuckerberg cũng chỉ đạt được ở tuổi 23. AI chính là chìa khóa giúp họ hiện thực hóa giấc mơ lớn trong làng công nghệ.

#AI #Startup #TỷPhúTrẻ #Mercor #CôngNghệ #Innovation #YoungEntrepreneurs #TriệuPhú #TechNews #AIRevolution

https://vietnamnet.vn/ai-giup-ba-nha-sang-lap-tuoi-22-lam-dieu-mark-zuckerberg-khong-la

Statt teure Verträge mit Unternehmen für deren Daten abzuschließen, verfolgen KI-Labore, wie Mercor, einen neuen Ansatz: Sie nutzen das Branchenwissen ehemaliger Führungskräfte dieser Unternehmen.

„ChatGPT wird mit der Zeit besser sein als die beste Unternehmensberatung, die beste Investmentbank und die beste Anwaltskanzlei“, sagte der CEO von Mercor auf der TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. „Das wird die Wirtschaft grundlegend verändern und eine durchweg positive Kraft sein, die dazu beiträgt, Wohlstand für alle zu schaffen.“

#Unternehmen haben guten Grund, #Mercor kritisch zu begegnen, da ihr Branchenwissen durch ehemalige #Mitarbeiter zur #Automatisierung ihrer Arbeit genutzt werden könnte. Zu den Kunden von Mercor gehören ua #OpenAI, #Anthropic und #Meta.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/29/how-ai-labs-use-mercor-to-get-the-data-companies-wont-share/

#ki #daten