LAID-OFF -SCIENTISTS & LAWYERS- LAIR-ONE : COMPREHENSION A.I.

FOR Amanda Brown - an assistant professor of biology at Tarleton State University in Texas, part-time gigs on platforms such as Mercor and Handshake seemed at first like a straightforward way to make extra cash while she wasn't teaching.

Some tasks offered $60 an hour, which sounded appealing and she was interested in learning more about the models, especially since her students use A.I. all the time.

The experience '' went downhill pretty fast,'' Dr. Brown said. She started getting pulled into mandatory virtual meetings and working until 2. a.m. to meet deadlines 

She became frustrated with gigs that paid a flat rate but that took far longer than she had expected. Her  Handshake manager told her vaguely that her work wasn't good enough, which she found '' soul destroying. '' She did the gigs on and off until December last year.

Part of the challenge, Dr. Brown said, was that over only a few months, she noticed rapid improvements that made it trickier to find things the A.I. models didn't already know, which made her shifts that much more difficult. This summer, she found a teaching gig.

I wanted to see what the data-training looked like, and Mercor invited me to its San Francisco office for a tour.

Then New York Magazine published a report headlined '' The Laid-off Scientists and Lawyers Training A.I. to Steal Their Careers, '' which painted a harrowing picture of the unstable, inconsistent, emotionally draining labor offered by Mercor.

!WOW! thanks Lora Kelley.