I trained generative AI for 18 months – here’s what I learned

A first-person account of training AI for tech giants.

Summer Reading – originally published October 23, 2025.

For 18 months, until September of this yearI worked as a gig worker for a large data annotation company – one of tens of thousands around the world training AI for tech giants.

We were called “taskers,” “contributors,” or freelancers. This third label was tricky: in many ways we behaved and were treated like employees, but we were not given the same protections as employees. Wired and other publications have begun reporting on exploitation Work practices at AI companies. The stories Come onand they do that too Complaints.

The impulse to know your enemy led me to apply. In early 2024, I was horrified and fascinated by generative AI – its queasy attempts at art and the hollow positivity of chatbots. Added to this was the greedy disregard for copyright, privacy and data sovereignty; the feeling that it “came for our jobs”; and – in the media – full of doom…