It\u2019s not a stretch to say that every tech company and their mother launched chatbots powered by generative artificial intelligence this year. Take for example Google\u2019s Bard, Anthropic\u2019s Claude, Microsoft\u2019s Copilot, and, of course, OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT. These chatbots are based on incredibly powerful large language models (LLM) and, in the short amount of time they\u2019ve been accessible to the public, they\u2019ve improved tremendously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such rapid refinement speaks to the power of LLMs and generative AI\u2014but it\u2019s also a testament to the behind-the-scenes work of hundreds of thousands of gig workers. These humans do a little-known job called data annotation, which entails rating and describing the inputs and outputs of AI models to help the chatbot \u201clearn.\u201d These tasks could involve reading and ranking AI-generated poetry, or labeling a menu\u2019s text with what words correspond to food items, drinks, and prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Historically, companies have exported this labor overseas and paid workers pennies. But recently, they\u2019ve been outsourcing data annotation work to a different and unexpected demographic\u2014and it could lead to some unforeseen and even dangerous consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, there\u2019s some Gen-Z slang you need to know: girlies<\/a> are young, online, mainly female-identifying users\u2014and Jackie Mitchell is definitely one of the girlies. As she chats with The Daily Beast on a video call, she sports a flawless deep red manicure that complements her auburn hair, with two loose strands tastefully framing her face. She\u2019s wearing a sleeveless, cream-colored turtleneck and dangling pearl earrings\u2014in other words, she looks like the opposite of a person who you\u2019d assume trains AI chatbots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI really did not ever anticipate doing anything like this, but I’m really into side hustles,\u201d Mitchell told The Daily Beast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When she was a college student, she wanted a bit of money to pay for date nights, but with school limiting her free time she didn\u2019t have a lot of options for \u201ctraditional\u201d jobs. So she turned to remote, on-demand work that she could do on her own time to bring in extra cash. She began taking short 10-minute surveys for money. One of these surveys turned out to be a data annotation project with a message at the end advertising work on a site called Data Annotation Tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was two years ago. She\u2019s since graduated and found a full-time job at a nonprofit\u2014but still manages to work in data annotation as one of many side hustles. Lately, she\u2019s been trying to make an extra $100 a day for 100 days to afford the down payment on her first house; since Mitchell works full-time, she\u2019s doubled down on remote gig work to meet her daily benchmark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In September, Mitchell started posting \u201cday in the life\u201d videos to TikTok describing her side hustles\u2014including data annotation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While she doesn\u2019t mention the site she uses by name, data annotation makes an appearance in dozens of Mitchell\u2019s videos in the series\u2014including one post that has been viewed more than 4.4 million times. Dozens of users have commented on these videos, saying they\u2019ve signed up for data annotation or asking questions about the work. Meanwhile, videos with the hashtag #dataannotation (which Mitchell does not use) have another 4.6 million views on TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brin, another creator on the platform, said that the so-called \u201cJackie Mitchell effect\u201d is indeed real: One of Mitchell\u2019s videos popped up on Brin\u2019s \u201cFor You\u201d page and inspired her to take an unpaid assessment through Data Annotation Tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI watched it and I was like, hell yeah,\u201d Brin, whose last name is omitted to protect her privacy, told The Daily Beast. \u201cShe’s doing what she needs to do to make things happen\u2014I want to do that. And I think I went into the assessment five minutes after watching that video.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mitchell and Brin signed confidentiality agreements with Data Annotation Tech, so they can\u2019t disclose any of the chatbots or projects they\u2019ve essentially helped train. But they\u2019re working with some of the biggest names in generative AI: Data Annotation Tech all appear to be owned by the same company called Surge AI, whose clients include OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Anthropic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, that means if you\u2019ve used ChatGPT, Bard, or Bing in the past year to help you write your essays, answer questions, or even craft jokes, you\u2019ve likely been chatting with a bot that\u2019s been trained by a small army of TikTok girlies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doing It For the Girls There are other types of projects on the site, too, involving skills like computer coding and language translation. In theory, the bots can learn from human data annotation and craft responses that are more accurate, helpful, and safer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In practice, data annotation can feel rote and monotonous, Brin said. \u201cIt’s nothing incredibly fulfilling or anything really complicated for that matter. It’s just trading your time for money\u2014and sometimes you need that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s not a stretch to say that every tech company and their mother launched chatbots powered by generative artificial intelligence this year. Take for example Google\u2019s Bard, Anthropic\u2019s Claude, Microsoft\u2019s Copilot, and, of course, OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT. These chatbots are based on incredibly powerful large language models (LLM) and, in the short amount of time they\u2019ve been accessible to the public, they\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-22.jpg",900,506,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-22.jpg",900,506,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-22.jpg",900,506,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-22-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-22-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"large":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-22.jpg",900,506,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-22.jpg",900,506,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-22.jpg",900,506,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-22.jpg",747,420,false],"graptor-sq-xs":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-22.jpg",100,56,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Admin CG","author_link":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/author\/admin-cg\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"news<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"It\u2019s not a stretch to say that every tech company and their mother launched chatbots powered by generative artificial intelligence this year. Take for example Google\u2019s Bard, Anthropic\u2019s Claude, Microsoft\u2019s Copilot, and, of course, OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT. These chatbots are based on incredibly powerful large language models (LLM) and, in the short amount of time they\u2019ve been accessible to the public, they\u2019ve…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22854,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22851\/revisions\/22854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Mitchell said that she mainly completes projects where she writes, edits, or fact-checks a chatbot\u2019s responses. She might have to compare two poems written by a chatbot to determine which of the two best answers a specific prompt, or take a response about the best seafood restaurants in Maryland and make sure the bot isn\u2019t \u201challucinating,\u201d or fabricating parts of its response or making inaccurate statements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n