“Training agents will be the largest job category in 5 years...”

Mercor CEO Brendan Foody made that prediction on LinkedIn, and his view that experts would be training AI agents was the CEO Perspective in the very first Human Data Jobs Weekly.

It also sets up this edition's Platform of the Week which is the recently launched Mercor Academy.

As the frontier labs push LLMs further, the need for subject matter experts and specialists to train AI has never been greater.

How experts train AI, however, keeps evolving. 

In this week's CEO Perspective, Toloka's Olga Megorskaya describes AI agents already checking experts' work before it can be submitted. Mercor launching an academy with agentic AI as its first course makes the same point. 

What does this mean for project-seeking experts like you and me?

It means being at the top of your field is no longer enough. Human data experts will also need to understand how agents operate in their industry, and our platform of the week provides you with a key 1st step in this regard. 

Enjoy this edition, and as always, your feedback is very much appreciated.

Mucha Murapa
Founder & Chief Editor, Train AI Media™

In this week’s edition:

Mercor needs very little introduction when it comes to AI training, but the Mercor Academy is a newer development, and my initial instinct is the creation of a platform that can and will benefit human data experts regardless of the platform they are working on.

When I took a good look at the academy platform, and then read what the two people who actually built it had to say, three things stood out:

Aaron Langerman’s day job is as Mercor's Director of Strategic Operations, but as an educator by background, he has also assumed the position of academy head of learning and development which matters because coupled with Austin Cornell, Mercor’s Academy has been built by people committed to teaching others.

The academy’s first course, Intro to Agents, was deliberately built to be accessible to anyone from any background, including a certification that sits on your Mercor profile and can be shared to LinkedIn (as well as the Human Data Expert Directory). 

Mercor is honest that being certified via academy training doesn't guarantee work on the platform, but what the academy will do for experts, is make you more capable in an area that is becoming increasingly central to how AI is built and used.

Mercor Academy is completely free and optional requires no paid tools.

Find it at https://www.mercor.com/resources/experts/academy/ make a profile if you don't have one, then look for the Learn tab.

micro1: Gmail & Google Calendar AI Assistant Evaluator

micro1: Content Writer - Australia / New Zealand

micro1: Primary Care Physician 

Mercor: Project Management Specialists

Mercor: Medical & Health Services Managers

Mercor: Voice Actor: CX Agent Voice Cloning (USA)

For more human data projects visit the Human Data Job Board.

Disclosure: Some links to project opportunities are referral links, which may earn Train AI Media™ a fee. You can learn more here.

During an excellent interview on The Front Lines, Toloka Founder and CEO Olga Megorskaya shared her thoughts not just on where she feels the industry is heading, but the absolute need for Human Data Experts to be a key part of the process, and her message was clear…

Instead of experts being replaced, they are actually moving up the chain. Toloka now has CTOs, COOs, consultants, investment bankers and other industry experts training AI agents on complex work that can take days or even weeks.

Create your very own expert profile for FREE!

As a subscriber to this newsletter, you're entitled to a free listing on the Human Data Expert Directory - the first professional directory built specifically for annotators, evaluators, prompt engineers and AI trainers.

LinkedIn wasn't built to showcase human data work. This directory was.

Platforms looking for people like you will find you here. The promotion and outreach is handled. You just need to show up.

Claim your free profile now and certified micro1 experts only need to show their certification as proof of expertise. 

In addition to micro1’s opportunities for freelance work as a Human Data Expert, they are also actively recruiting core team members.*

Here are a few full-time positions currently available with micro1: 

micro1: Community Manager

micro1: Virtual Assistant 

micro1: Associate Data Partnerships Manager 

Toloka: Freelance Social Media Manager

Toloka: Product Marketing Manager

Mercor: Executive Assistant

For more platform core positions visit the Human Data Careers page here

Disclosure: Some of the links to core job opportunities are referral links, which may earn Train AI Media™ a fee. You can learn more here.

The AI training industry pays $15 to $500+ an hour. Most experts know only two or three platforms, work in complete isolation, and have nowhere to turn when a project ends without warning.

Human Data Professionals is the first LinkedIn community built for everyone in the Train AI economy: annotators, evaluators, prompt engineers, RLHF specialists, project leads and the platform professionals recruiting them. It's free, moderated and peer-focused.

Join to:

Join free at humandataprofessionals.com

Let me know what you thought of this special edition at: [email protected] 

I read everything personally, and appreciate the feedback. 

Mucha

This issue was independently produced by Train AI Media™.