Why a $14 Billion Startup Is Now Hiring PhD’s to Train AI From Their Living Rooms

Matt Mattingly sold the bed-and-breakfast inn he owned in southern Maine several years ago and was trying to “figure out what I want to be when I grow up.” This year, after looking for a remote job that would put his communications Ph.D. to use, he responded to an online ad looking for people to train artificial intelligence models from home.

Mattingly passed a paid assessment lasting nearly six hours, including tests on whether he thought various AI-generated responses were harmful. He soon became one of hundreds of thousands of people working on a freelance basis for Scale AI, doing everything from training Google’s AI so it can book a flight to reviewing which ChatGPT answers get poor feedback from users.