Google has laid off about 200 artificial intelligence (AI) contractors who were working to improve and enhance its AI tools and systems. The impacted employees reportedly believe that they were replaced by the very systems that they helped build and train.
Media reports say that the contractors, often referred to as ‘super raters’ were engaged in rating and evaluating AI outputs. These contractors included researchers, writers and teachers who reviewed AI responses given by Google’s Gemini chatbot, created prompts to test the model and helped to further improve or filter summaries generated by AI for Google Search. The laid-off employees were the ones who helped ensure accuracy and reliability in Google’s answers. However, they were reportedly paid much less than they deserved for their work in addition to being bogged down by work pressure and surrounded by uncertainty with regard to their jobs. Some of the affected feel that all this while their efforts seem to have indirectly gone into creating tools that are now taking over their work.
These contractors, some of them with high qualifications, were paid hourly wages in the range of $18 to $32. Some were hired directly by GlobalLogic, an outsourcing company, while others were hired via third-party agencies. There was reportedly a vast difference in the wages of those directly recruited and those not.
However, it is reported that a couple of contractors filed a case with the labour department accusing Google of retaliation, maintaining that they were terminated simply because they chose to voice their opinions.
