TL;DR
Amid economic downturn and government push, underemployed Chinese professionals are turning to AI training gigs to earn extra income, though the work is poorly paid and unstable.
With the economy sluggish and layoffs spreading, underemployed Chinese lawyers, architects and engineers are becoming AI trainers. After their day jobs, they log onto platforms and teach AI to draft building proposals or offer legal advice, earning 100-500 yuan per task.
Why take on this gig
The government wants AI adopted across the economy and encourages experts to annotate data to raise the 'knowledge density' of training sets. With youth unemployment near 17.9 percent and many professionals seeing their income halve, mortgages and children's tutoring fees still press, so teaching AI is a way to fill the gap.
What it's like to teach AI
Trainers must design tasks the AI cannot yet solve, upload real work documents, write down their thought process, and must not use AI themselves. If quality control rejects their output, hours of work may go unpaid. Despite the difficulty, many see it as an entry into a future-proof industry.
Middle-class anxiety
A software engineer with 20 years of experience said the industry has been hit hard by AI, with full-time engineers replaced by contractors, so she takes gigs fearing job loss. A law graduate prefers teaching AI to joining a firm with grueling hours and harassment. Professor Julie Yujie Chen notes that ordinary white-collar workers in China feel an urgency to find supplementary income.
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