I Tracked Down the Hidden Workers Secretly Powering ChatGPT
These workers are training AI to take their own jobs.
There’s a hidden workforce powering the rise of ChatGPT, and nearly 1 in 5 of them have fallen into homelessness.
We investigated America’s AI sweatshops, and found a new gig economy run by Big Tech.
Reporter: Karen Hao
Producer: Sam Black
Supervising Producer: Sam Quigley
Editor: Nora Tennessen
Videographers: Peter Braswell, Natalie Chao, Justin Feltman, Devon Lyons, LaDawn Manuel, Adam McCoy
Video Production Manager: Isabel Atalaya
Video Production Coordinator: Jodi Clemens
Video Production Fellow: Astrid Dong
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@Ev3ryBodyGets1-o4o
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
I wish someone would actually do non biased journalism around this. It is fascinating but I just want the facts not a doomer spin. the bias makes it hard to parse.
@JamesStarbullet
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
The story here hits close to home. But also imagine having a Phd from an Ivy League school and no one will hire you. We are so fucked.
@partidaportet27
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Why?
@MissNulle2000
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
im tired of the term "self made" its a fantasy, pure and simple.
There is no such thing as a self made anything, when it comes to humans.
First of all you were born thanks to two other humans, even if they didnt take good care of you, you still had to be clothed, fed and taught the fundementals, or the tools to discover everything you know by other people. And even still, if you had to figure most of that out if not all of it on your own. ALL the food you ate, ALL the clothes you wore, ALL the things you owned were in your possesion thanks to other humans. Either directly made by them, or thanks to the knowledge of thousands of generations past.
You could live isolated in the woods in a cabin you built on your own with tools and rosources you made yourself. AND STILL you are not "self made" because you only knew how to do ANY of those things thanks to EVERYONE that came before you.
There is no such thing, as a "self made" anything.
@ZeeBri
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
So eventually we are literally going to have to have a French revolution?
@bkramzi6915
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Somehow i don't feel sorry for them experts who cannot find a good paying job anymore, even though i am jobless senior developer myself struggling to find a job, because they are the cause of their desease, they are the one who trained the AIs knowing they will replace them. It's like fishermen who notice scarcity in fish numbers but instead of waiting for them to bread and increase in numbers everyone rushes to catch the ones left before every body else does. So all i can say is you deserve what you get.
@JamesStarbullet
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
I worked as a Content Analyst for Google. I was paid 22 dollars an hours with a Master's degree. I worked on curating responses from Magi. I saw some of the most racist responses. Things that were just flat out wrong. And at one point I curated a response where they had the AI trying to curate itself. This is what these people think of us. I took the job because I was desperate. I needed one. And after working that job for 5 months completing one contract and signing a second one I was laid off in the middle of a work day with no notice. 35 people gone. Just locked out or emails and computers. No meeting to let us know we'd been kicked out. A day of anxiety of if I had a job. My team leads not knowing what was happening cause no one was told anything. It was the middle of the week. Middle of the day. There was no meeting. Not even an email saying "we'll have to let you go". Just an email to my personal account to ship back my work laptop. I was always critical of AI but even I thought at the time it has certain uses and with proper regulation it could be useful. But after working for Google. After seeing the process myself behind the scenes. Being treated the way we were with zero respect or professionalism shown to us. I loathe AI. I hate what is used for. I hate the cost. The environmental damages. The political implications and the human cost. AI isn't a tool. It's a callous weapon. Something made with the express purpose of replacing us. Like I said if they could they'd replace even the curating of AI with AI.
@fredrik354
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Feels like the tv show Severance but worse. I'm not looking forward to the future.
@IllusionDX
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
I'll take their jobs if they don't want them
@MalaklypsetheElder
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Another thing that I think needs to be said that I left out of my previous comment was, stop working for these people. Even if the AI tech bubble isn't real and LLMS aren't complete garbage like they appear to be and as the CEO of Nvidia said recently the cost of compute is creating AI workers that cost more than human beings or as various CEOs have pointed out these things don't work the way they were told they would work and even just doing multitasking roles in a office environment only one of these AI models can complete tasks with 20% completion rate, and these things aren't costly lying or hallucinating all the time even if none of that's true and all the things we've been told by the AI industry are actually real which they're not, why would you give these people your time and energy for their money when they've already been using a hype train marketing campaign that you're all going to lose your jobs which is not necessarily true because this is a big scam, and then when they do need people and when corporations on end user side realize that this is garbage and it's not going to work and they hire people back for cheaper rates, why is anyone continuing to give their energy and labor to these companies? Stop working for these people treat them like the ideological and economic which is they are and burn them ideologically in the public square not literally but ideologically and shun them from society and don't use their products. This is probably the worst and largest garbage tech scam that I've seen in my lifetime and I've been here on this planet probably longer than most of the people that are reading these comments and writing here. Deny them your labor deny them your praise and understanding and forgiveness and all this nonsense and just roast these people metaphorically in the public square of the internet and never give them any of your energy again. That's the solution you boycott them en mass, hopefully with the end state or an endpoint of driving them out of the economy and out of your society because you don't want these people around. Then we've got the whole fiasco of all the water and electric necessity required and the total scam that they're actually putting up these data centers around every corner and every block and every 20 mi all over the country which is not happening A lot of these things that have broken ground haven't even gone to completion yet and we've got a whole bunch of these data centers that started planning a production years ago and are still publicly admitting they don't even know where they're going to get the power from. So obviously they're going to lean on local political officials and the political structure to manipulate their way into jacking up your electricity and your water bill so that they can fund their garbage economic bubble because as Catherine Austin fits and others have pointed out the only thing holding this economy together is this fake AI tech bubble and money laundering receipts from major national American banks for wandering drug proceeds from Norco cartels. That's it there's nothing else holding this economy together these people in this country in the political class in the business community along with all the others around the world went all in on globalism a couple decades ago and didn't realize that it wasn't going to work cuz they're all ideological socialists and communists than they can't think correctly and now they've realized one people never wanted this and they don't want it now still and it doesn't work and now so they're trying to backtrack and re-engineer the economy but really that's not going to happen that's why we're going to war that's why everyone's going to go to war because they've realized they've created a depression and a situation where nothing functions anymore and so now they have to kill a bunch of people and reset the economy through wartime economic measures so there's nothing that isn't black build out of any of this. Deny them your labor, deny them your attention, and publicly denounce these people as the psychopathic lunatics they are. And this isn't even getting into all the other crazy stuff going on like the 22 point manifesto that palantir put out I mean my God have is anyone read that? These people are literally the definition of old testament sorcerers only they're using sorcery that is a form of psychology and behavioral modification manipulation and social engineering and you shouldn't suffer under these people no one should suffer a witch to live next door to them whether we're talking about an actual witch that murders in poisons or we're talking about these people that are murdering and poisoning your economy and your livelihood. Drive them out of society elect officials that will do so that agree with you that are not sold out blackmailed and never ever give them your attention or your money or your labor again that's the only solution. And while we're on that subject matter you better start preparing and getting competent trustworthy people around you and start doing things like creating your own private membership associations trust and LLCs and separating yourself from society because once they realize they can't get their way they'll do what they always do and they'll burn everything down and they'll drag you into the fire with them That's how these people roll because like I said I wasn't using flowery or hyperbolic language before they are pathological lunatics every single one of them and that's largely due to the fact that they all marry their cousins and they're all inbred because they're all part of the same bloodline families and that's very easy to find out just go look at any respectable genealogy and you'll see who these people are and they're not any people that you want to associate with.
@ronlight7013
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Talk about burying the lede, it’s about 10 minutes in.
@lichiehrb
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
This would only be good if it meant that people can then have a better quality of life. That's not the case though. We will all suffer from this.
@jamesthornock8214
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
“It’s predatory” says the person accepting the role.
@ChristySMrBean
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
These "Fraud Lords" aka contemporary Robber Barron's, are despicable, deplorable, vile & cruel!
@MAC-Avila
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
3:22 LOGITECH MX VERTICAL LIFT SPOTTED 🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥💪🏽
@femboyskeleton9150
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Butlerian Jihad now, total machine death
@judithincalgary
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
If I were designing policy around this from scratch, I’d begin by treating AI training labour as real infrastructure work rather than pretending it’s a magical side hustle performed by anonymous “contributors.” Right now, the industry gets all the advantages of having a workforce while avoiding most of the responsibilities that normally come with employing human beings.
The first thing I’d do is force transparency. If a company sells an AI product, it should legally disclose how much human labour was involved in building and maintaining the system, where those workers are located, what they’re paid on average, how often projects disappear, and whether workers are being exposed to traumatic material. People should know the hidden human cost of the tools they use every day. At the moment, the public mostly imagines AI as autonomous software. The reality is much messier and much more human.
I’d also create a legal labour category specifically for AI data workers because the current contractor model is basically designed to strip people of stability. If somebody is spending thirty or forty hours a week training your models for months at a time, they are not a casual gig worker in any meaningful sense. They are part of your operational backbone. That should come with minimum pay standards, predictable compensation, appeal systems when workers are arbitrarily removed from platforms, and some form of benefits or protections. Right now, people are expected to live in a permanent state of uncertainty while billion-dollar firms scale upward on top of their labour.
The psychological exposure described in the transcript also needs to be taken far more seriously. One of the workers talks about reviewing grotesque AI-generated violence and having nightmares afterward. If a company requires people to spend hours reviewing simulated torture, gore, abuse, or deeply disturbing content, that is not ordinary office work. There should be mandatory mental health support, rotation limits, hazard pay, and hard restrictions on how much exposure any individual worker can absorb. We already understand this principle for emergency dispatchers, crime scene investigators, and other professions exposed to trauma. The AI industry shouldn’t get a free pass simply because the material arrives through a screen.
I’d also try to break the monopoly structure that’s forming around AI. A huge part of the problem is that a very small number of corporations are racing to dominate what is becoming a kind of centralized cognitive infrastructure. The more concentrated that power becomes, the more pressure there is to cut labour costs, accelerate automation, and treat human workers as disposable inputs. I’d invest heavily in public research, university partnerships, smaller regional AI ecosystems, and open models that aren’t controlled entirely by a handful of private firms. Intelligence infrastructure is too important to leave entirely in the hands of companies whose primary legal obligation is shareholder return.
Most importantly, I’d push AI development toward augmentation instead of replacement. That distinction matters enormously. AI can help human beings become more effective, more informed, and less crushed by repetitive administrative work. Or it can be used primarily as a labour compression tool that steadily removes people from meaningful economic participation. Those are two very different futures. An AI system that helps nurses process patient information faster is useful. An AI system designed to replace nurses with synthetic customer service is socially corrosive. The same is true for teachers, writers, designers, researchers, and countless other professions. The technology itself does not automatically dictate the outcome. The incentives around the technology do.
I’d also give workers more ownership over their reputations and credentials. One of the cruellest parts of platform labour is how easily a person can disappear economically because an algorithm stops surfacing work, or a company simply ghosts them. Workers should have portable reputations, portable records of expertise, and collective bargaining structures that follow them across platforms. Otherwise, every company becomes its own tiny feudal system where workers have no leverage and no continuity.
Underneath all of this lies a deeper cultural problem that the transcript repeatedly hints at. There is a strand of Silicon Valley ideology that genuinely views most human beings as temporary inefficiencies. The fantasy is that scalable machine intelligence will eventually replace large portions of human cognition and management. But human beings are not merely inefficient processors waiting to be upgraded. We are social creatures, moral agents, caregivers, artists, teachers, witnesses, and meaning makers. An economy is supposed to support human flourishing. It is not supposed to gradually reorganize society into a system where millions of educated people live in chronic instability while a tiny handful of corporations accumulate extraordinary wealth and cognitive power.
And historically, societies become very unstable when large numbers of educated people lose access to dignity, continuity, and meaningful work all at once. That isn’t science fiction. It’s a pattern that recurs throughout history.
@mustafaays1270
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
😢
@MalaklypsetheElder
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Welcome to the rest of the middle class economy that's been going on for decades. It's unbelievable how many people in this country don't understand how the job market labor market and economic drivers that affect these two things adversely are all pervasive.
@imants.cekusins
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
The background music is unnecessary. Really.
Those who would like to listen to music they like, can do so quite easily.
@kcm1974
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
I don't know why anybody thinks they have any freaking choice at all
@NoamLeon100
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
That's one of the most important videos I've seen. Thank you!
@lazyupload
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Shoulda feed them a bunch of useless crap data for that kind of wage
@scienceoffreedom
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
RE-TITLE: I Tracked Down the Hidden WHINERS Secretly Powering ChatGPT
@TheRabbitKing2925
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
I feel like showing her skin color and her two previous jobs and that she had a PhD is incredibly irresponsible if you're trying to prevent the companies from identifying her. All of this information which could have been left out without it changing the information in the video at all.
@David_Canada557
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Fascinating documentary. A neighbour of mine did data work for OpenAI and is haunted by a particular justification: if he hadn’t done it, someone else would have. We got talking about how AI will be trained to outperform entry-level workers, and how the next generation will simply be expected to adapt to whatever workplace emerges.
What he doesn’t reckon with, though, is the employer’s side of that equation. Companies won’t just adopt AI, they’ll use it as cover to hire younger workers at lower wages. And unlike AI, the cost of living won’t reset. Prices aren’t returning to pre-Trump levels. Inflation is baked in.
So the question he left unanswered is the one that actually matters: what does the next generation do when the jobs are fewer, the pay is lower, and everything costs more?
@lo2740
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
these garbage american companies are the cancer of humanity
@Soule6
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Intellectual vampires. Obliterate all oligarch tech nerds.
@Observant_Truth
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Ideally we wouldn't do this under the current administration but the federal government has the authority to rescind and take ownership of patents that exist in this country for national security purposes. The government needs to take the current existing llm patents that open AI Glock Gemini are all based on it needs to take ownership of them and it needs to provide everybody with a free open source base code for artificial intelligence when everybody can check it for biases when everybody can vet it for security vulnerabilities everybody then has a vested interest in using an appropriately I think
@CryptoNewsTV
May 9, 2026 at 8:04 pm
Ai will reduce costs we need to embrace it and force the costs to become so low that a profit cap is introduced to be no more than 10% forcing the use of ai to ensure we benefit long term.
Comments are closed.