Uber is recruiting contractors in India, the US, Canada, Poland, and Nicaragua to label images, text, and videos with context for machine learning models. The company also plans to use workers' cultural knowledge to adapt products to local markets and their programming knowledge to provide feedback on an AI chatbot's responses to software engineering questions. This move could allow Uber to gain a share of a growing market, as global companies increasingly rely on humans to vet data to train AI models.
Key takeaways:
- Uber is expanding its gig-economy workforce to include programmers, entering a new market of helping businesses outsource some of their artificial intelligence development to independent contractors.
- The new division, called Scaled Solutions, builds on an internal team that handles large-scale annotation tasks for Uber’s rideshare, food delivery and freight units, and has begun serving other companies that need high-quality datasets.
- Uber has started signing up contractors with various skills in India, the US, Canada, Poland and Nicaragua, with earnings determined by each task they complete and paid out monthly.
- Uber plans to enlist workers to use their cultural knowledge to adapt products to local markets, or use their programming knowledge to provide feedback on an AI chatbot’s responses to software engineering questions.