{"id":296796,"date":"2025-11-17T09:36:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T09:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/296796\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T09:36:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T09:36:11","slug":"ai-companies-are-treating-their-workers-like-human-garbage-which-may-be-a-sign-of-things-to-come-for-the-rest-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/296796\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Companies Are Treating Their Workers Like Human Garbage, Which May Be a Sign of Things to Come for the Rest of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

In today\u2019s economy, tech companies are red hot. In fact, the companies burning cash on AI seem to be some of the only ones having a truly great time, as the corporate rate of profit<\/a> plummets throughout the US and recession fears loom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though one economist estimates tech companies accounted for 92 percent<\/a> of US GDP growth in the first half of 2025, you wouldn\u2019t know it by looking at their staff rosters \u2014 which seem to be plummeting at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n

Amazon, for example, recently laid off 14,000 corporate employees<\/a>, despite posting billions in profits<\/a> across numerous lines of business. Across the month of October, tech workers<\/a> made up the highest number of layoffs in any industry, leading the charge in one of the worst single months for furloughs since 2003. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s bad news, of course, but it also directly contradicts the AI industry\u2019s promises of \u2014 in the words of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman<\/a> \u2014 ushering in \u201ca world in which humanity flourishes to a degree that is probably impossible for any of us to fully visualize yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, as Business Insider reports<\/a>, the bloodbath is far from over. On Tuesday, the AI grading company Mercor \u2014 which has massive contracts<\/a> with corporations like OpenAI and Anthropic \u2014 suddenly announced it was shuttering a huge project with Meta, leaving workers scrambling. The Meta Project, called Musen, employed some 5,000 data labelers<\/a> at its peak, and was previously expected to last until at least 2026, according to BI.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey kept stressing how happy the client was and how it got extended until the end of the year,\u201d one contractor told the publication. \u201cSo to then do this major switch up before the holidays took everyone by surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily for those workers, Mercor is offering to hire them back \u2014 just not for Musen. Instead, they\u2019ll have the opportunity work on an extremely similar project named \u201cNova.\u201d The main difference, it seems, is the wage offered: while Musen\u2019s base contract was $21 an hour, Nova\u2019s opens at $16. <\/p>\n

Two tech workers offered a Nova contract said the offer email explained the difference in pay is due to \u201csteadier task volumes across multimedia content\u201d and \u201chigher hour caps, enabling greater weekly engagement.\u201d In other words, data labelers \u2014 who already had a bum deal as stable jobs become temporary contract work \u2014 get to work more for less pay.<\/p>\n

One employee who accepted a contract to work on Nova told BI the work is functionally the same, \u201cbut for $5 less an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounds like most of us are in the same boat,\u201d the worker added. \u201cWe wanted to boycott this but are not in a financial place to do so. We needed to have the guaranteed income, even if it\u2019s demoralizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The whole episode underscores the false promises beneath the AI boom: jobs are being degraded<\/a>, the number of \u201cfreelance workers<\/a>\u201d is soaring, AI-generated profit is almost nonexistent<\/a>, and rising tides on Wall Street certainly aren\u2019t raising all boats<\/a>. If this is how the most powerful companies in the world are treating workers now, why would the AI \u201cutopia,\u201d as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella<\/a> calls it, be any different?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, if the companies on the cutting edge of a supposed \u201ctechnological revolution\u201d can\u2019t be expected to take care of their employees, what hope do the rest of us have?<\/p>\n

More on labor: The AI Industry Can\u2019t Profit Unless It Replaces Human Jobs, Warns Man Who Helped Create It<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In today\u2019s economy, tech companies are red hot. In fact, the companies burning cash on AI seem to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-296796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}