'Crowdworking' provides the humans who train artificial intelligence

Eager to make extra money on the side, Washington, D.C., resident Paula Alves Silva turned to a gig emblematic of the digital age: She recorded sentences read aloud in the comfort of her home to help train artificial intelligence (AI) software. Silva completed the tasks in her native Portuguese tongue for Seattle-based startup DefinedCrowd, which develops machine learning algorithms that power products for businesses including heavyweights MasterCard and BMW. Such recordings could be used in voice recognition products introduced in new countries, or to train existing systems to recognize non-native speakers or regional accents, the company says. Silva earned $20 -- from 8 to 33 cents per sentence -- and considered that satisfactory given the short amount of time it took to complete the tasks. The knowledge that her task would contribute to a new artificial intelligence system was a bonus, she said.