I have a side concert as a data worker who forms AI and mysteries purchases

This also filed test is based on interviews with Brook, an independent 46 -year -old data worker and mother of Michigan. Business Insider has checked its professional history. This test was published for more clarity and length.

I have been doing technological work behind the scenes since 2006 – before most people hear the word “AI”. I started as a worker of the independent crowd on Amazon Mechanical Turk, performing tasks such as marking photos, transcription of business cards, receipts and verification if the websites operated.

Since then, work has really changed and many new platforms have appeared because AI has become more in demand. Now, I do everything, the formation of vocal assistants AI and the labeling of the content of social media harmful to the rewriting of chatbot responses and the recording of speech.

I never had a full -time job by doing this. I am a freelancer, mother of young children and member of the school board in Michigan. I used platforms like Mturk, Appen, Neevo, Prolific and Data annotation, among others. Some projects or tasks pay up to $ 40 an hour, but they are difficult to find and can be really competitive to continue.

This is not my main source of income, as for other people in the workspace on AI concerts. It’s money for extras like birthday gifts and grocery store.

I work when I can, usually a few hours at night after my children went to bed. If there is a good job available, I try to take it, because you never know when a project will disappear. Flexibility is what brings me back.

I spent 3 years of advertising on Facebook Mystery Shopping

There are a lot of random tasks that appear here and there.

I worked on a mystery shopping project for almost three years, where I was paid to buy stuff to Facebook and report the quality of the product, if it was legitimate and corresponded to what the announcement had promised.

I would connect to a dashboard, I would see an ad and make you say: “Buy this if you can.” I could only skip a product if it was illegal, the announcement was fraudulent or it was a subscription. I couldn’t choose what I bought.

There was an expense ceiling of $ 150 per product. I was reimbursed for all the items I bought and paid $ 5 per examination. On average, I worked about four hours a month – two hours of purchase, two hours to write criticism and I examined about eight products each month. I received thousands of dollars in goods.

I ordered all kinds of things: wigs, skin care, shein clothing, wall art, shoes, sunglasses and supplements.

A game was decent – I always use a Bluetooth speaker and a terrace box that I bought via the task. From time to time I, I, clear a creator object: authentic Birkenstock sandals, Adidas sneakers, even shelves of rays.

I kept about half of what I ordered. Many of what happened was not great, and I got rid of right away. Some products were low -quality imitations. Others would arrive broken or strange sizes.

I jumped around half of the advertisements that showed me. Certain websites were summary – spelling errors, no contact details, payment gates of a scam.

I saved calculation sheets of everything I bought – five to nine items per month for three years. It’s a lot of mysteries at my door.

The project ended suddenly in February 2024. I just connected in one day, and it was no longer there. I was surprised that it lasted as long as he did.

Compared to other concerts, they were low and somewhat fun issues

I did a lot of different work in this space, and mysteries purchases were simple in comparison. It didn’t pay much but was stable and easy to manage.

When the work is really good on a single platform, I will focus on it. If the work dries up, I pass my next the most successful and I continue a rotation.

Some of the better paid work has been vocal projects. I was made to say hundreds of sentences in a microphone to have it recognized regional accents, to help form vocal assistants like Alexa or Siri.

PROLIFIC – A platform where you can be paid to complete the academic surveys of universities, researchers or data labeling tasks – has been one of the most coherent platforms in recent times. It pays between $ 10 and $ 15 an hour, but the real salary can fluctuate. I carried out data annotation projects on prolific which pay $ 28 an hour, although these are less common and can be competitive.

Not all offers are worth making. I have seen projects on certain platforms asking workers to install cameras at their front door or wear a pair of smart glasses to provide training data for AI systems.

Some request home videos or selfies sometimes used to train AI facial recognition tools. Some of them come with derogations that you must sign promising that no child will appear in the images. I don’t take these jobs.

I mainly stick to what seems reasonable – write prompts, revise, chatbot training, vocal work and data annotation. I prefer not to add my face or living room to these systems, because it feels invasive.

For me, it is not a question of winning a full -time income. I do it just when I have time. I like to do this work with young children because I can go to their events and not worry about being on my computer at a specific time. This type of flexibility is difficult to find elsewhere.