Hollywood writer and showrunner pivots to AI training after 2023 writers' strike left studios in disarray. The author, now working for firms like Mercor and Outlier, spends days grading chatbot responses and annotating bizarre content—from dog barks to simulated violence—at $150/hour. Projects collapse abruptly, leaving workers unpaid and platforms like Slack and Airtable abandoned overnight.Expert roles at $70/hour emerged, demanding degrees in fields like linguistics or history to evaluate AI outputs.

One project, Project Dead Language, stalled after chaotic onboarding and vague instructions. Freelancers describe a "Hunger Games" environment, competing for scraps of work while team leaders wield unchecked power.The industry’s reliance on human labor for AI development clashes with its anti-union stance. Writers grapple with ethical dilemmas, realizing their skills are exploited to refine tools meant to replace them.

As one worker notes.