![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/14317fc31a0e7b7947e89b647957b3f4.jpeg\")
Dr. Alice Chiao speaks with CNN’s Hadas Gold. – CNN <\/p>\n Dr. Alice Chiao speaks with CNN’s Hadas Gold. – CNN <\/p>\n
Dr. Alice Chiao used to teach emergency medicine to students at Stanford University\u2019s medical school. Now, she\u2019s teaching artificial intelligence-powered chatbots to think, diagnose and prescribe like her.<\/p>\n
Chiao is part of a booming new economy of professional experts in their fields who are training AI through a process called reinforcement learning, essentially grading AI\u2019s responses and teaching models to improve through trial and error. It\u2019s a rapidly growing service industry for AI frontier labs, estimated to be worth at least $17 billion, according to Pitchbook Senior AI Analyst, Dimitri Zabelin.<\/p>\n
Chiao is one of tens of thousands of experts working with Mercor, one of the companies that help manage reinforcement learning for major AI companies. Mercor has contracts with experts in subjects ranging from medicine, law and finance to comedy, sports and even wine. Experts can earn up to hundreds of dollars per hour teaching AI to do their own jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI is going to be the new Doctor Google, the new WebMD that people will go to, to seek out medical information. I knew that I needed to be a part of that to make sure that the information is accurate, that it\u2019s safe, and that it makes sense to the person using it,\u201d Chiao told CNN.<\/p>\n
AI models are trained on massive amounts of data. But that training doesn\u2019t do much good without what\u2019s known as \u201creinforcement learning,\u201d a process that involves human experts teaching models the differences between good and bad responses. Companies like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic use what Mercor\u2019s CEO Brendan Foody described as \u201clarge armies of people\u201d to do just that.<\/p>\n
Mercor was recently valued at $10 billion. – CNN <\/p>\n
Uncertainty over how AI will reshape various industries hit a fever pitch over the last two weeks. Software stocks plunged in early February following the release of a new tool<\/a> from Anthropic that tailors its model for work in specific industries like legal and finance. Then, a viral<\/a> essay from a tech CEO swept the internet with stark declarations about how AI could disrupt jobs. And some say Mercor is causing job displacement, replacing stable full-time careers with gig work that will contribute to AI taking human jobs.<\/p>\n But Chiao doesn\u2019t see her work through Mercor as teaching AI how to do her job. Instead, she views it as ensuring AI models are safe and capable enough to help doctors spend more time with patients and less time filling out forms. She sees AI as eventually being able to assist doctors with reading scans, filling out charts and taking notes.<\/p>\n \u201cPhysicians were selected because we really want to help people. We want to heal. We want to spend time talking to people \u2014 listening, engaging,\u201d Chiao said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to see it as AI taking over our jobs. I want to see it as AI taking over the aspects of our jobs that prevent us from being good doctors, good healers and good listeners.\u201d<\/p>\n When Chiao is training AI models, she uses real scenarios she\u2019s encountered in her decades as a doctor in both primary and emergency medicine. That includes asking questions from both the patient\u2019s and doctor\u2019s perspective. A patient, for example, might ask whether their child should see a doctor when experiencing a cough or fever. But the system also needs to know how to respond when presented with medical jargon \u2014 like what a physician might see on an intake form.<\/p>\n The AI model sometimes provides answers Chiao wouldn\u2019t have thought of herself, she said. But other times, she sees a need for professionals like herself to step in.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes there will be things that don\u2019t quite make sense, and I think, \u2018Oh, this could be misleading,\u2019 or \u2018This could be alarmist,\u2019 or \u2018This is not quite safe to put in a response,\u2019\u201d Chiao said. \u201cAnd those are where I intervene and say, \u2018OK, this is where I need to craft something that makes this safe, accurate, and applicable to the user at hand.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Mercor\u2019s experts grade a model\u2019s response using a rubric they\u2019ve created after consulting with a team of other experts in their field. Those responses are fed back into the model, which is trained to aim for good grades.<\/p>\n As for AI in medicine, Chiao said patients should use today\u2019s AI model tools as a starting point before talking to a doctor. The technology is not a replacement for a doctor like herself with 20 years in the field.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a gut feeling that comes with experience, that comes with sitting with a patient, looking them in the eye, and seeing something that is beyond their history, their lab values, the words that are coming out of their mouth,\u201d Chiao said. \u201cSo, this is where it\u2019s really important to know that the AI is not a doctor, it\u2019s not a human being.<\/p>\n The most popular experts Mercor hires for are in software engineering, followed by finance, medicine and law, Foody, Mercor\u2019s CEO, told CNN. Job posts on Mercor can range widely, calling for everything from journalists to mechanics.<\/p>\n But Foody notes that not everything can be taught, and the more subjective the task, the more difficult it is for AI to master.<\/p>\n One example is comedy. Mercor tried to train one AI model to be funnier by hiring comedians from the Harvard Lampoon, an iconic comedy publication from Harvard University.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were cracking all these jokes and writing all these rubrics to improve models and how funny they are,\u201d Foody said.<\/p>\n The problem, however, is one that\u2019s obvious to humans but not so much to machines: People have different opinions on what\u2019s funny.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you actually need is more localization of how humor varies by geography, and (answer) how do we have experts that can understand what jokes are in all of these different domains,\u201d Foody said.<\/p>\n Before Foody and his Mercor co-founders set out to help AI models get better at human jobs, the company had a very different goal: helping people get hired.<\/p>\n Mercor, which Foody co-founded three years ago at age 19 with friends Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha, started as a recruiting and human resources platform. When they shifted the company\u2019s focus to AI, their rolodex of resumes was the perfect starting point for finding the experts AI companies were seeking.<\/p>\n Foody said Mercor is now paying out more than $1 million per day across thousands of experts, and in less than two years has grown from $1 million in revenue run rate to over $500 million. Pitchbook\u2019s Zabelin said the company is valued at more than $10 billion, adding that Mercor and its competitors\u2019 high values show investors think services like human feedback and expert testing of AI models are becoming a permanent and essential part of how AI systems are built and improved.<\/p>\n Mercor is not the only company in this space. Last year, Meta made a $14 billion investment in Scale AI \u2014 which operates in a similar space as Mercor \u2014 bringing on its then-28-year-old founder Alexandr Wang as its chief AI officer. Other competitors like Surge AI, Handshake and Micro1 have helped mint a new class of young, ultra-wealthy tech founders.<\/p>\n While valuations fluctuate, 22-year-old Foody and his co-founders are likely some of the youngest tech founders to make the Forbes billionaire list since Mark Zuckerberg, who made the list at age 23.<\/p>\n \u201cWe of course were ambitious about what we wanted to do, but never could have imagined anything like this, especially happening so quickly. So, it feels very surreal,\u201d Foody said.<\/p>\n Foody has enjoyed some benefits of being a young billionaire (he said he treated his family to tickets for the SuperBowl). But his focus remains on growing a business that he sees as being critical to shaping the future of work despite the mounting concerns about AI displacing jobs.<\/p>\n In his view, Mercor\u2019s work is a step toward solving bigger problems.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to cure cancer. We need to solve climate change,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd making everyone 10 times more productive so that they\u2019re able to better work on those key problems is going to be a huge, huge benefit to how we make progress as a society.\u201d<\/p>\n For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com<\/a><\/p>\n Dr. Alice Chiao. – CNN <\/p>\n
Mercor, a startup AI company, is headquartered in San Francisco. – CNN <\/p>\n
Mercor\u2019s CEO Brendan Foody. – CNN <\/p>\n