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This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
Riley Willis sits behind his keyboard for 30 hours a week. When he clocks out on Saturday, he’s made it through all his shifts without speaking to a soul.
Willis is an AI contractor, working in data annotation through a company called DataAnnotation.tech. He says his job is fully remote and operates asynchronously — with no set boss, no contact with coworkers, and no daily meetings.
“It’s perfect for an introvert,” he told Business Insider.
Willis said his days consist of “fact-checking” the output of various AI models — but only because that’s what he chooses to take on. He says DataAnnotation.tech offers a variety of projects for contract workers to choose from, including teaching AI to improve its creative writing and coding skills.
“You are literally going through and you’re labeling the information based on a series of criteria that differ between projects,” Willis said. “I personally work on a lot of factual stuff, just because I just find the pay-to-effort ratio is nice. So, there’s a lot of fact-checking responses, making sure the models aren’t lying or hallucinating information.”
As companies continue the push to improve their AI models, there’s been a corresponding spike in demand for data annotators and labelers. Workers in the field spend their time either “generating data for training and labeling data for training,” Willis said, completing tasks in programming, writing, and research.
Willis said he was first drawn to the job when he was looking to move out of his parents’ house and wanted to avoid a role in retail.
“I wanted a job that wasn’t customer service or anything like that,” he said. “I was already doing remote school, so I was kind of already comfortable with the remote environment.”
When he first onboarded, Willis said he was making $20 an hour, but now nets about $25. Hourly rates vary depending on the projects workers take on, and Willis said he’s seen them reach as high as $30.
Despite not undertaking a full-time workload, Willis, who is pursuing a bachelor’s in computer science through the University of Florida’s online program, said he’s able to fully cover his expenses — including tuition and rent in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“I can pay rent, and I can pay my way through college,” Willis said. “It’s not like I have a lot of spending money in the end, especially if I’m not working 40 hours full time kind of stuff, but I have enough where I can live generally.”
Willis said his frugal lifestyle is what allows him to stretch his pay, adding that he “couldn’t support himself” if he were living alone.
“I live poor, honestly,” he said. “If I had some extravagant lifestyle — If I went out to, you know, bars and everything, and spent a lot online — I probably couldn’t do it. But, just getting through my day, it completely covers it.”
The job does have its drawbacks. Willis said the repetitive nature of the tasks can be “mind-numbing.” And unlike a full-time position, Willis only gets paid for the time he’s sitting down at his computer, actively working on assignments.
“Even in a high-paced job, I feel like, you know, there’s paid lunch breaks, stuff like that,” he said. “Or, you know, you spend a second or two talking to someone, but you’re still on the clock getting paid. With this, you’re really not getting paid unless you are doing the work.”
Willis said he sometimes spends “six or seven hours” on research but only gets paid for about “five hours of actual work” because of the need to pause occasionally. Regardless — Willis said the pros of the job outweigh the cons.
“I will personally say work-life balance is nice, in the sense that, obviously, it’s remote and I can work whenever I want,” he said. “I can work at 1 o’clock in the morning if I really feel like it.”
For someone who’s looking for a side hustle to tack onto their full-time role, Willis says working to train AI might be a better overall fit.
“I think this would be really, really good for someone who has an actual job and is doing this, like two hours a day,” he said. “I think this is really what this kind of setup shines in. If you have an actual full time job, and you just add the extra hour, hour-and-a-half, a day, earning an extra $25 to $50 a day, just when you have nothing else to do, is definitely doable.”
