Journalists like Carla McCanna and Cory Clark have transitioned to working for Outlier due to the scarcity of staff jobs and freelance opportunities in journalism. While some journalists, like Celia Hack, express concerns about contributing to AI technologies that could potentially replace journalism jobs, others see it as a way to adapt to the evolving landscape and supplement their income. The article highlights the mixed reactions among journalists, with some embracing the opportunity to work with AI and others wary of its implications for the future of journalism.
Key takeaways:
- Outlier, a gig work platform owned by Scale AI, is recruiting journalists to train large language models (LLMs) by leveraging their writing, research, and fact-checking skills.
- Journalists, facing a challenging job market, are turning to Outlier for remote, flexible work opportunities, with some using it as their primary income source.
- Outlier and similar platforms pay workers to perform tasks like labeling training data and evaluating AI model outputs, contributing to reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF).
- While some journalists embrace this work as a way to engage with AI technologies, others express concerns about contributing to the potential obsolescence of journalism jobs.