a buzzy San Francisco-based AI company called Mercor is hiring desperate job-seekers to train AI models to one day do their work.
Economic uncertainty is continuing to have devastating effects on the availability of jobs. Last year, the US labor market reeled from slowing wages, layoffs, and a notable lack of hiring, leading to the highest unemployment rate in the country in four years toward the end of 2025.
And while debate swirls about whether AI is actually replacing jobs in any serious numbers, many tech startups are trying to make it a reality. As the Wall Street Journal reports, a buzzy San Francisco-based AI company called Mercor is hiring desperate job-seekers for a particularly ghoulish task: training AI models to one day do the work they used to do.
It’s a depressing new reality as concerns over AI replacing jobs en masse continue to grow. Late last year, computer scientist and AI “godfather” Geoffrey Hinton predicted that AI would continue to “replace many, many jobs” in 2026 as the tech “gets even better.
