Cash for Hating on AI? The Weird New Ways Companies Are Paying You to Play with Chatbots
Sometimes it pays to be a hater. Online trolls, this one's for you: An AI startup called Memvid is dropping $800 for someone to spend a full eight-hour day straight-up bullying chatbots. The gig? Testing and ripping apart the memory functions of popular AI models.
Sure, it's got viral marketing vibes written all over it. But dig deeper, and it's a smart play. Money talks when it comes to getting humans to poke at AI's weak spots—and companies are leaning in hard.
Big Firms Dangling Cash for AI Wins
Take KPMG, the consulting powerhouse. They're rolling out "AI Spark Awards" that hand out cash prizes to employees with killer ideas for deploying AI on the job. BI's Polly Thompson got the exclusive: Prizes could dwarf typical year-end bonuses (though they'll split them by team and idea impact, so no Hamptons dreams just yet). Rob Fisher, KPMG US's vice chair of advisory, called them "materially larger."
This isn't fringe stuff. AI is flipping the script on compensation everywhere.
Tech's Wildest Perk: Free Compute Power
In Silicon Valley, top engineers aren't just chasing salaries anymore—they're demanding compute credits as part of their packages. As BI's Alistair Barr puts it: Without massive GPU access, you could crank out way less code than your peers, tanking your career.
It's pay-to-play in the AI era. Got skills? Now you need horsepower to flex them.
Your Expertise as AI Training Data—What's It Worth?
This trend echoes gigs we've seen before. Remember Meta paying $50/hour last year for people to record facial expressions and chit-chat for metaverse avatars? Or Tesla hiring humans in motion-capture suits to teach Optimus robots how to fold laundry?
But here's the mind-bender: What if companies paid you to train AI on the stuff you're already an expert in—like analysing labour trends or optimising resumes? I asked this exact question in a newsletter poll last year. Results? No clear winner:
As AI gobbles up more jobs (while creating quirky ones like "chatbot bully"), it's forcing us to rethink skill valuation. Gen Z hustlers, take note: Your side gig critiquing Grok or Claude could pay better than your barista shift.
What do you think—would you take $800 to roast AI all day? Or demand equity in the model you train?