AI is creating paid work for people who teach models the skills of their professions, while also raising the prospect of job displacement across those same fields. A CBS News 60 Minutes report puts both sides of that uneven transition in view, from freelance trainers to concerns about young workers losing the tasks that once helped them get started.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The report says Mercor has assembled more than 100,000 freelancers to train AI systems in subjects ranging from finance to poetry. Robbie Hiser, a music producer who has trained AI for the company, says the work does not mean creative careers are finished. Mercor chief executive Brendan Foody sees AI as a way to reduce repetitive work; economist Daron Acemoglu warns that automation could displace workers, and argues that companies and governments still have choices about how it is introduced.
The account also describes a law firm using AI personas based on senior lawyers to give feedback on documents, and concerns that AI agents may let smaller teams do work once spread across dozens of people. Some AI-training gigs pay between $20 and $200 an hour, according to the report. Read the CBS News report.
Why it matters
The same technology can create paid work in one corner of the labour market and reduce demand for other tasks elsewhere. That makes “AI creates jobs” and “AI replaces jobs” poor competing slogans: both may be true, but neither tells a worker which changes are coming to their occupation or who will benefit.
The report highlights particular pressure on entry-level work such as research and first drafts. Those tasks are not glamorous, but they are often how people gain experience. If organisations automate the first rung, they may need to build another route for new workers to learn the job.
Our read
The useful question is not whether AI will change work. It already is. It is whether employers use it to make people more capable, or mainly to do the same work with fewer people. The report offers examples and competing views, not a settled forecast; readers should treat confident predictions about the scale and speed of job losses accordingly.
What to watch
- Whether employers redesign entry-level roles as routine tasks are automated.
- How much paid AI-training work lasts as models and training needs change.
- Whether companies adopt AI to support workers or reduce team sizes.
Discussion spark: If AI takes over the routine tasks that help people learn a profession, should employers be expected to create new entry-level training routes, or is that adaptation the worker’s responsibility?
Sources and evidence
Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.