OpenAI would ask contractors to upload actual work from past jobs

OpenAI reportedly asked contractors to upload actual work from past jobs

OpenAI and training data company Handshake AI require third-party contractors to upload actual work they’ve done in their past and current jobs, according to a report in Wired.

This appears to be part of a broader strategy within AI companies that are hiring contractors to generate high-quality training data in the hopes that it will eventually allow their models to automate more white-collar work.

In OpenAI’s case, a company presentation reportedly asked entrepreneurs to describe tasks they’ve done in other jobs and upload examples of “real field work” they’ve done.In fact done.” These examples can include “a concrete result (not a summary of the file, but the file itself), for example, a Word document, PDF, Powerpoint, Excel, an image, a repository”.

The company reportedly asks contractors to remove proprietary and personally identifiable information before uploading it, and it directs them to a ChatGPT “Superstar Scrubbing” tool to do so.

Nonetheless, intellectual property attorney Evan Brown told Wired that any AI lab taking this approach is “putting itself at great risk” with an approach that requires “a lot of trust in its contractors to decide what is confidential and what is not.”

An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment.