Side Hustle or Scam? What to Know About Data Annotation Work

On TikTok, Reddit, and elsewhere, posts are popping up from users claiming they're making 20 per hour--or more--completing small tasks in their spare time on sites such as DataAnnotation.tech, As companies have rushed to build AI models, the demand for "data annotation" and "data labeling" work has increased. Workers complete tasks such as writing and coding, which tech companies then use to develop artificial intelligence systems, which are trained using large numbers of example data points. Some models require all of their input data to be labeled by humans, a technique referred to as "supervised learning." And while "unsupervised learning," in which AI models are fed unlabeled data, is becoming increasingly popular, AI systems trained using unsupervised learning still often require a final step involving data labeled by humans.