\u201cWe basically teach AI models, and then we measure how well they\u2019re learning. We do that by bringing together the smartest people in the world,\u201d Chen explained. \u201cWe actually have what I believe is the largest group of PhD experts in the world on a platform, teaching these models.\u201d<\/p>\n
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People such as Oliveira Santos, 25, who spends her days crafting mind-bendingly difficult \u201cfrontier math\u201d equations to throw at AI systems. Her first one ran to more than 40 pages. \u201cI was planning to follow an academia kind of path where I guess my final goal was to be a professor,\u201d she explained. \u201cBut since AI came to be, I found, \u2018OK, no. I actually want to work in the industry. I think this way I feel like I can make much more of an impact on the world.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of the conversation about the AI revolution has focused on the likes of OpenAI and Google<\/a>, the companies designing these powerful systems, or on the data centres and power plants being built to power them.<\/p>\n \u2022 Inside the power-hungry data centres taking over Britain<\/a><\/p>\n But there is a third leg of the stool: the millions of contractors who are, every day, all day, toiling far from the bright lights of the AI revolution, taking an hourly wage to feed data to these systems. <\/p>\n This unseen army, working in global locations from Lagos to London to Manila, are engaged in what amounts to an immense transfer of knowledge from humans to digital brains \u2014 one that, if Silicon Valley is to be believed, will very soon put up to half of white-collar workers<\/a> out of a job.<\/p>\n Chen, a former AI researcher at Meta<\/a>, Twitter and YouTube, has emerged as one of the key players at the heart of this booming \u201cdata labelling\u201d industry. He has plenty of competition. Meta paid $14 billion (\u00a310.5 billion) for half of Scale AI, Surge\u2019s rival, this summer, while Mercor, a two-year-old start-up, recently raised $350 million from investors who valued the company at $10 billion.<\/p>\n Data-labelling companies may all get dropped into the same category, but they often do wildly different things. Some operate at the lower end, paying rock-bottom wages to people in the developing world to do the grunt work of labelling bits of content \u2014 this is a cat, this is a joke \u2014 so that AI can \u201ctrain\u201d on the data. Others correct the AI tools when they spit out bad answers.<\/p>\n Surge AI\u2019s army specialises in \u201creinforcement learning through human feedback\u201d, in which highly qualified professionals push at the outer limits of what AI systems can handle. The company pays anywhere from $20 an hour to as much as $500, depending on the labeller\u2019s particular skills. Most of its workforce, Surge added, live in English-speaking countries in North America and Europe.<\/p>\n Surge AI was founded five years ago<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n Beyond the numbers, however, a labour fight is brewing over whether the contractors used by Surge AI and its ilk should be treated as employees \u2014 and thus have better pay and conditions. Glenn Danas, an attorney at the law firm Clarkson in Malibu, California, has sued Surge, Mercor and Scale AI over working conditions and wage theft. <\/p>\n Danas said: \u201cIn this industry, one of the unique aspects is that there are some people who are very well educated and they are being treated worse than a fast-food worker.\u201d<\/p>\n His suit against Surge alleges a range of alleged infractions, including requiring unpaid training, ending projects without warning, not providing paid meal and break times, and not compensating for overtime. Surge said the suit was \u201cwithout merit\u201d and has entered into arbitration on the case. <\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is, we\u2019re sort of allowing these companies to get at skills that should be very highly compensated<\/a>, super cheaply,\u201d Danas said. \u201cThe consequence will be that you\u2019ve just sort of aided creating this thing that then won\u2019t need you any more, and it really just didn\u2019t pay what it should have.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Close-up](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\/ebb49a21-e5ed-4740-baf6-0335631dfd9c.jpg\")
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