AI training is a booming industry that is making the human contributors behind the screen more important than ever.
As data from publicly available sources runs out, companies like Meta, Google, and OpenAI are hiring thousands of data labelers around the world to teach their chatbots what they know best.
Data labeling startups like Mercor and Handshake advertise that contributors can earn up to $100 an hour for their STEM, legal, or healthcare expertise. Other companies are banking on armies of generalists to rate AI responses, annotate social media videos, or improve a chatbot’s understanding of native languages. The flexible work appeals to parents, full-time professionals, and students alike — but it can be tedious, often convoluted, and slow to onboard.
Five contractors shared how they broke into the sometimes lucrative world of AI training, including how much money they’ve made.
These as-told-to-essays are based on conversations with the contractors, and they have been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified their work.
Jessica Hamilton, Illinois
I’ve always been an entrepreneur and have been running my e-commerce business since I was in college, which I graduated in 2018. I came across Prolific in 2023 after seeing it mentioned on a Reddit group called Beer Money.
There were enough people on Reddit who were giving Prolific credit that I decided to go for it. I signed up at the start of 2023, but it was not until 14 months later that I was taken off the waitlist and started getting projects.
I’ve been active on the platform since May 2024 and have worked on a wide range of projects. Prolific started off as an academic research tool, and most of the surveys were in politics, psychology, or health-related topics. AI training work, which is newer to the platform, involves evaluating or comparing AI responses and doing fact checks.
I’ve tried other platforms like DataAnnotation, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, Appen, and Telus, which did not have as long a waitlist. But once I started to get work on Prolific, and especially AI tasks, it has become my primary platform. I’ve also found it to pay a lot better than a lot of the other companies.
I keep my laptop open between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., five days a week, and check Prolific for projects every now and then. Through this work, I made $1,200 in September, $1,100 in August, and about $1,000 in July.
The extra money supplements my income from my e-commerce store and my family’s go-karting business. It has helped me pay off student loans faster and will help pay for a new laptop. Last August, I went to the Olympics in Paris and to three other countries. I was able to pay for it because of my income from these platforms.
Elizabeth Boyd, Florida
In July 2023, I received a LinkedIn message from a Scale AI recruiter inviting me to apply as a law domain expert on Remotasks, a Scale AI-owned platform that preceded Outlier.
I was onboarding by early August, but didn’t do much work on the platform until March or April of 2024. They were offering daily bonuses for working a set number of hours. Good pay rates with regular bonuses, weekly payments, and not needing to look for clients on a regular basis made the AI work more attractive than the content creation work I’d been doing. I put my travel agency franchise on the back burner.
Since then, AI training has been my main source of income. I typically work around 30 to 35 hours a week, and I supplement that with some online writing.
Though I started as a law domain expert, I rarely ever worked on projects with a legal focus. Instead, I work on a wide variety of general, non-STEM topics that require specialized multimedia prompt engineering and AI response evaluation skills, as well as quality assurance work.
I worked on the Mindrift platform very briefly last year. However, nearly all my AI work was with Remotasks, then Outlier, until this summer. Now, the bulk of my AI training work is with the Mercor AI platform.
Outlier paid me $45 per hour, then $40 per hour. Now my rate with them ranges from $35 to $50, but they have a setup that drops the rate to $21.16 after a set time that is never sufficient for completing the task, so the effective rate is always lower than the starting or stated rate. It’s one more reason I generally avoid working there now.
Mercor pay rates vary greatly, but the projects I’m currently working on pay $45 and $45.50 per hour.
Some highs of freelancing on these platforms include the opportunity to work in a cutting-edge industry and being able to attain valuable skills. It’s also attractive pay for my experience and skills. Another plus is teamwork with some very smart, funny, and talented co-workers.
There are lows as well. There is no job security, and some projects are short-term, which means I have to continuously apply to new ones. However, project extensions are frequent, and I am often referred to new projects by my project leads for doing good work.
The work can be monotonous, and some of the projects can be run poorly, resulting in chaos and frustration.
A Scale AI spokesperson told Business Insider that Outlier gives contractors pay rates and estimated task times at the start of a project. “When contributors flag that certain tasks regularly take longer than expected, we review those tasks and adjust where appropriate.”
Ryan Adams, Virginia
I’ve been tasking on Outlier for about a year and a half now, and I do it alongside my full-time job at a health and environmental nonprofit in Virginia.
I came across Outlier through a simple Google search because I was trying to learn more about AI. I applied to the platform and started receiving projects about three weeks later, after completing some onboarding and training.
I’ve worked on about 30 projects since, including training video chat models and voice recording projects. I spend about 20 to 25 hours on Outlier each week, and up to 30 hours when there are incentives like bonus pay.
I’ve been approached by another platform, but chose to work only on Outlier because it’s been a good fit for me, and I can’t take on more platforms with my full time job.
Per hour, I can make close to what I make in my full time job. I’ve earned about $31,000 so far, which is about one-third of what I made in my job over the last year and a half.
It’s allowed me to invest more and build emergency savings. My credit score is the highest it’s ever been, and I’ll be able to pay off my car loan by the end of the year. Eighteen months ago, I would not have believed that I could have an AI-related side hustle without working in tech.
Fred Nau, Florida
I’m a school chemistry and physics teacher. I heard about Outlier after my master’s when someone from the platform reached out to me on LinkedIn. They said that my experience in chemistry was something they were specifically looking for.
I applied at the start of 2024, and I started receiving projects within a couple of weeks. I majored in chemistry in college, and a lot of the projects I’ve taken on centered on chemistry or physics and rating different model responses in terms of accuracy. The platform has a lot of specialists, including people with PhDs from various academic backgrounds.
I try to work on the platform for one to two hours after work and five to 10 hours over the weekend, which gives me about 15 to 20 hours a week. Last year, I was working a lot less than I am now, but I made about $15,000.
I’ve used the extra income to pay for a down payment, and I’ve also used it to go on vacation with my girlfriend.
Even as a teacher in the district I work for, they’re making a huge push toward using AI and AI tools. For me, it’s a good opportunity to not only ensure that AI performs better by working on projects that improve data quality, but also to gain a better understanding of how AI works.
I’ve recommended it to other teachers because students are using AI. If you’re a teacher, it’s great to have exposure to these tools and the data that goes into this technology.
Peter Intile, Wisconsin
I have an extensive educational background in microbiology and immunology, and I earned a Ph.D. in the field. At my day job, I work for a management company, but still get to use my scientific knowledge for our projects.
I’ve always been involved in research work and was familiar with the kind of academic research platforms like Prolific or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk help with. Toward the tail end of the pandemic, when I had some extra time, I revisited Mechanical Turk, which I had used before.
I came across messaging boards and social media platforms that all said that Prolific is the place you should be going to for such work now. They noted several reasons, including better pay and a wider range of projects.
I signed up, was accepted in about two weeks, and have been working on it for about two and a half years. Since I first joined, the work has transitioned from academic studies and surveys into more AI-focused tasks. Much of it is about making the AI more human, such as behaving in ways that a human would anticipate or provide information.
I don’t use my scientific background very often in my AI task work — it’s mostly using my writing or critical thinking skills. I occasionally will get one or two that ask very specific biology-related questions, and those are fun because they bring me back.
It’s better than sitting on social media and scrolling aimlessly. It is a valuable use of my time, and it feels like meaningful work because I know researchers need good data in order to make conclusions about their research. I’m happy to participate in that.
I usually spend about two to three hours a day on the platform, primarily after work hours. I make somewhere between $20 to $100 a day, with the pay being around $20 an hour. I find myself getting enough tasks on Prolific that I haven’t spread myself out on other data labeling platforms.
We’re approaching Christmas, and this side hustle is paying for gifts. The other thing is vacations and being able to do things with my family a little bit more freely.
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