Human Expertise: The Engine Behind the AI Data Revolution

Although many blame AI for the current jitters in the job market, even the most ardent AI believer recognizes that human intuition and human expertise is something that a computer cannot replace — and thus, it’ll always have value. 

Within AI itself, the instincts and the knowledge developed over a lifetime plays a pivotal role in the development of the next-generation frontier LLM model, or an AI-driven robotics system that brings manufacturing back onshore. Rather than replace human brilliance, AI makes it more necessary than ever. 

Finance experts will be necessary to train AI models on investment approaches. Doctors are creating synthetic medical data for healthcare large language models. Lawtech AI firms have attorneys on retainer, but they aren’t filing briefs or drafting contracts, but rather crafting the raw materials that their models need to function. 

Right now, AI labs are spending anywhere between $10bn to $15bn on data and the human processes that make that data useful. That figure is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years, and it’s easy to imagine a situation where AI data training becomes a $100bn/year industry. 

For context, that’s roughly the same size as the US cosmetics industry. 

Even if generative AI doesn’t quite become the game-changer that many hope, the AI data training industry will continue to grow. This technology isn’t going anywhere — and we’re already seeing the fruits of AI in a variety of industries, from manufacturing to automotives, and beyond. 

These systems will require meticulous, well-labeled data that’s aligned with the objectives of the customer. A human will liaise with the customer to figure out what they need. A human will collect and organize the data. A human — someone with intuition and expertise — will need to do that annotation. Humans will perform quality-control on the data and its annotations. 

This is all heavily labor-intensive work — and it’s necessary. 

micro1 is at the forefront of this industry. Over the past thirty days, we’ve helped 1,500 people find work in the AI data training market, and — like the industry itself — we’re only really just beginning. 

The question that employers, customers, workers, and platforms need to answer together is what do we want this industry to look like? 

Our position is simple. We want one that benefits the workers and the employers. We want one where the essential characteristics that make humans so irreplaceable are augmented with technologies that make them even more effective — which, ultimately, leads to better AI models and robots. 

The AI data training industry is already a multi-billion dollar sphere, and even with or without the mass-market success of generative AI, this is a sector that’ll continue to grow. We’re on the precipice of something big, and it’s important to get this right.