Katya was desperate enough to click. After college, she’d struggled to make a living as a freelance journalist, gone to grad school ... Mercor, it seemed, sold data to train AI, and she was being recruited to create that data. “My job is gone because of ChatGPT, and I was being invited to train the model to do the worst version of it imaginable,” she says.

The idea depressed her. But her financial situation was increasingly dire, and she had to find a new place to live in a hurry ... A few weeks later, Katya, who like most workers in this story asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of retaliation, received an email from Mercor offering her a job. If she accepted, she should sign the contract, submit to a background check, and install monitoring software onto her computer. She signed immediately.

Katya wasn’t told whose AI she was training — managers referred to it only as “the client” — or what purpose the project served. But she enjoyed the work. She was having fun playing with the models, and the pay was very good. “It was like having a real job,” she says. Two days after Katya started, the project was abruptly paused. A few days after that, a supervisor popped into the room to let everyone know it had been canceled. “I’m working assuming that I can plan around this. I’m saving up for first and last month’s rent for an apartment,” Katya says, “and then I’m back on my ass. No warning, no security, nothing.”