What is ai trainer?
A person paid to produce or judge data that trains AI models: writing answers, rating outputs, labeling data or testing for safety.
An AI trainer is a person paid to produce or judge the data that teaches AI models. The title covers several kinds of work: writing ideal answers, rating and ranking model output, labeling data, and testing models for safety failures.
Who becomes one
Anyone who writes clearly and follows detailed guidelines can start with general tasks. The best-paid roles go to domain experts: doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, scientists, and fluent speakers of languages models handle poorly. Many trainers do it part-time alongside another job.
How hiring works
Platforms such as Mercor, micro1, Turing and Outlier run an application, a skills assessment and sometimes an AI video interview, then offer work project by project. Pay is hourly or per task, and you work as an independent contractor. Our interview prep guides cover the assessments by role.
Example
A tax accountant on an AI trainer contract spends a week writing tricky questions about depreciation rules, then a second week rating how three models answered them.
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More terms: how the work is organised
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