In January, Mike Monegan recognised the signs. He’d having trouble falling asleep for weeks.
As vice president of product management at Australian artificial intelligence software vendor Appen, Monegan and many of his coworkers have been scrambling to stay alive as internet giants cut their spending on the business’s AI training data.
80% of Appen’s sales came from five clients: Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Google, and Amazon, and this was expected to be the time when the business would really shine. In order to avoid falling behind in the sudden scramble to include the newest massive language models into all of their projects, businesses throughout the industry were making significant investments in generative AI.
In more than 170 countries, Appen operates a platform with over 1 million independent contractors. It has previously employed that network of individuals to train some of the top AI systems in the world while working for a star-studded roster of tech firms, including the largest consumer brands as well as Adobe, Salesforce, and Nvidia.
Source (CNBC)