As a Shenzhen-based architect in her 40s, Cuicui has vast experience designing public stadiums, schools, and hospitals at an architecture firm. But over the past five years, declining government infrastructure spending caused a sharp drop in business. Her income halved.
To keep paying her mortgage and cover her child’s extracurricular fees, Cuicui became a specialized AI trainer. At the end of her regular workday, she would log on to a data annotation platform called TalentsAI, and give an AI model step-by-step instructions on how to write up a building proposal or run profitability analyses.
“It is just like teaching a child,” Cuicui told Rest of World. “Every task has to come from my actual work.”
You have to keep evolving yourself to avoid getting completely replaced.”A Shanghai-based software engineer with two decades of experience who began taking AI training gigs in July.
In the U.S., data companies like Mercor, Surge AI, and Handshake have already recruited tens of thousands of Hollywood filmmakers, lawyers, and scientists to train AI models on various white-collar tasks. These jobs are now emerging in China, as the government pushes for AI adoption across the economy.
