Google’s Bard artificial intelligence chatbot will answer a question about how many pandas live in zoos quickly, and with a surfeit of confidence.
Ensuring that the response is well-sourced and based on evidence, however, falls to thousands of outside contractors from companies including Appen and Accenture, who can make as little as $14 an hour and labor with minimal training under frenzied deadlines, according to several contractors, who declined to be named for fear of losing their jobs.
The contractors are the invisible backend of the generative AI boom that’s hyped to change everything. Chatbots like Bard use computer intelligence to respond almost instantly to a range of queries spanning all of human knowledge and creativity. But to improve those responses so they can be reliably delivered again and again, tech companies rely on actual people who review the answers, provide feedback on mistakes and weed out any inklings of bias.