"The number of Google contractors working on various projects isn’t public knowledge, but the company may rely on as many as 12,000 AI workers across seven to 10 different contractors, Wait, who started working with GlobalLogic raters after they reached out to her last February, estimates. Other artificial intelligence engines depend on thousands more. At GlobalLogic, which declined to comment for this story, workers are assigned to support Google engineers working on projects that include Gemini, Google’s AI “assistant.”
In some ways, this type of work is not new—engines like Google have long relied on underpaid raters to train their search algorithms—but the AI boom has led to exponential unregulated growth in this workforce, as tech juggernauts pour billions of dollars into the race to capture market share. In 2023, a Time investigation found that OpenAI had paid Kenyan contractors less than $2 an hour to watch and identify violent and abusive content. The workers, who also rated content for Meta, lost their jobs when they tried to organize. A lawsuit against Meta is ongoing. On April 30, moderators launched a global trade union alliance across nine countries; so far, the United States is not one of them.
GlobalLogic workers, who are based in the United States, do make more money than their Kenyan peers, with wages for generalist raters starting at $16 an hour. So-called “super raters” are paid $20 or more an hour to do the same kind of work, because they usually have master’s or doctoral degrees—although that’s well under the average for American workers with comparable qualifications. In other ways, though, the work can be much the same across national borders. Rachael Sawyer works on a project training Google’s AI to filter out hateful and violent content, including child sexual abuse material."
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/google-ai-workers-union/
#AI #GenerativeAI #Google #AITraining #Gemini #GlobalLogic #Hitachi