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AI models now require trainers with advanced degrees

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Invisible Tech employs 5,000 specialized trainers globally

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It takes smart humans to avoid hallucinations in AI

By Supantha Mukherjee and Anna Tong

STOCKHOLM/SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 28 (Reuters) - In the

early years, getting AI models like ChatGPT or its rival Cohere

to spit out human-like responses required vast teams of low-cost

workers helping models distinguish basic facts such as if an

image was of a car or a carrot.

But more sophisticated updates to AI models in the fiercely

competitive arena are now demanding a rapidly expanding network

of human trainers who have specialized knowledge -- from

historians to scientists, some with doctorate degrees.

"A year ago, we could get away with hiring undergraduates, to

just generally teach AI on how to improve," said Cohere

co-founder Ivan Zhang, talking about its internal human

trainers.

"Now we have licensed physicians teaching the models how to

behave in medical environments, or financial analysts or

accountants."

For more training, Cohere, which was last valued at over $5

billion, works with a startup called Invisible Tech. Cohere is

one of the main rivals of OpenAI and specializes in AI for

businesses.

The startup Invisible Tech employs thousands of trainers,

working remotely, and has become one of the main partners of AI

companies ranging from AI21 to Microsoft ( MSFT ) to train their AI

models to reduce errors, known in the AI world as

hallucinations.

"We have 5,000 people in over 100 countries around the world

that are PhDs, Master's degree holders and knowledge work

specialists," said Invisible founder Francis Pedraza.

Invisible pays as much as $40 per hour, depending on the

location of the worker and the complexity of work. Some

companies such as Outlier pay up to $50 per hour, while another

company called Labelbox said it pays up to $200 per hour for

"high expertise" subjects like quantum physics, but starts with

$15 for basic topics.

Invisible was founded in 2015 as a workflow automation company

catering to the likes of food delivery company DoorDash ( DASH ) to

digitize their delivery menu. But things changed when a

relatively unknown research firm called OpenAI contacted them in

the spring of 2022, ahead of the public launch of ChatGPT.

"OpenAI came to us with a problem, which is that when you

were asking an early version of ChatGPT a question, it was going

to hallucinate. You couldn't trust the answer," Pedraza told

Reuters.

"They needed an advanced AI training partner to provide

reinforcement learning with human feedback."

OpenAI did not respond to request for comment.

Generative AI produces new content based on past data used to

train it. However, sometimes it can't distinguish between true

and false information and generates false outputs known as

hallucinations. In one notable example, in 2023 a Google chatbot

shared inaccurate information about which satellite first took

pictures of a planet outside the Earth's solar system in a

promotional video.

AI companies are aware that hallucinations can derail

GenAI's attractiveness to businesses and are trying various ways

to reduce it, including using human trainers to teach the

concept of fact and fiction.

Since getting onboard with OpenAI, Invisible says it has become

AI training partners to most of the GenAI companies, including

Cohere, AI21 and Microsoft ( MSFT ). Cohere and AI21 confirmed they are

clients. Microsoft ( MSFT ) did not confirm it is a client of Invisible.

"These are all companies that had training challenges, where

their number one cost was compute power, and then the number two

cost is quality training," Pedraza said.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

OpenAI, which started off the frenzy around GenAI, has a

team of researchers aptly named "Human Data Team" that works

with AI trainers to gather specialized data for training its

models like ChatGPT.

OpenAI researchers come up with various experiments like

reducing hallucinations or to improve writing style and work

with AI trainers from Invisible and other vendors, a source

familiar with the company's processes said.

At any point, dozens of experiments are being run, some with

tools developed by OpenAI and others by tools of vendors, the

person said.

Based on what the AI companies want - from getting better at

Swedish history or doing financial modeling - Invisible hires

workers with relevant degrees for those projects, reducing the

burden of managing hundreds of trainers by the AI companies.

"OpenAI has some of the most incredible computer scientists in

the world but they're not necessarily an expert in Swedish

history or chemistry questions or biology questions or anything

you can ask it," Pedraza said, adding that over 1,000 contract

workers cater to OpenAI alone.

Cohere's Zhang said he has personally used Invisible's

trainers to find a way to teach its GenAI model to find relevant

information from a big data set.

COMPETITION

Among the competitors in this space is Scale AI, a private

start-up last valued at $14 billion which provides AI companies

with sets of training data. It has also ventured into the area

of providing AI trainers, and counts OpenAI as a customer.

Scale AI did not respond to requests for an interview for this

story.

Invisible, which has been profitable since 2021, has raised only

$8 million of primary capital,

"We are 70% owned by the team, and only 30% owned by investors,"

Pedraza said. "We do facilitate secondary rounds, and the most

recent traded price was at a half a billion dollar valuation."

Reuters could not confirm that valuation.

Human trainers first got into AI training through data-labelling

work that required less qualification and was also paid less,

sometimes as low as $2, mostly done by people in African and

Asian countries.

As AI companies launch more advanced models, the demand for

specialized trainers and across dozens of languages is on the

rise, creating a well-paid niche where workers from a variety of

subjects could become AI trainers without even knowing how to

code.

Demand from AI companies is leading to the creation of more

companies that are offering similar services.

"My inbox is basically inundated with new firms that pop up here

and there. I do see this as a new space where companies hire

humans just to create data for AI labs like us," Zhang said.