‘There’s a lot of desperation’: skilled older workers turn to AI training to stay afloat

“这里充满了绝望”：资深高龄员工转向 AI 训练以维持生计

They have degrees, expertise and years of experience – but can’t find work. For many Americans, AI training has become a last refuge in a brutal job market

他们拥有学位、专业知识和多年经验，却找不到工作。对于许多美国人来说，在残酷的就业市场中，AI 训练已成为最后的避难所。

When Patrick Ciriello lost his job and couldn’t find work for nearly a year, his family’s foundation crumbled.

当帕特里克·西里洛（Patrick Ciriello）失业且近一年无法找到工作时，他家庭的基石崩塌了。

“You hear about people who hit rock bottom,” Ciriello told the Guardian. “Well, I was there.”

 “你总听说有人跌入谷底，”西里洛告诉《卫报》，“嗯，我正是如此。”

For most of his career, the 60-year-old with a master’s degree in information management designed software systems for banks, universities and pharmaceutical companies. But a series of economic shocks – the dotcom crash, the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic – cost him jobs, sometimes forcing him to dip into his savings and retirement funds. Each time, he eventually found another role.

在他职业生涯的大部分时间里，这位拥有信息管理硕士学位的 60 岁老人一直在为银行、大学和制药公司设计软件系统。但一系列经济冲击——互联网泡沫破裂、2008 年金融危机以及新冠疫情——让他多次失去工作，有时不得不动用储蓄和退休基金。每一次，他最终都能找到新角色。

That changed at the start of 2023. After losing a job building industrial printer heads, Ciriello sent out hundreds of applications for IT support roles, customer service positions and even a deli counter job at a local supermarket. He didn’t get a single offer.

但在 2023 年初，情况变了。在失去一份制造工业打印头的工作后，西里洛发出了数百份申请，求职目标涵盖 IT 支持、客户服务，甚至是当地超市的熟食柜台职位。他一份offer都没拿到。

Even before losing his job, Ciriello, his wife, their 20-year-old son and their cat had been living in motels in northern Vermont for a year, an expense that the state covered because they were experiencing financial hardship. When Vermont ended this funding at the close of 2023, Ciriello’s family had to move out. For about four months, they slept in a Toyota Highlander. They often parked overnight in Walmart lots and spent their days in libraries and McDonald’s with free wifi so he could submit job applications.

甚至在失业前，西里洛、他的妻子、20 岁的儿子和他们的猫已经在佛蒙特州北部的汽车旅馆住了一年，这笔费用由州政府因其经济困难而承担。当佛蒙特州在 2023 年底停止这项资助时，西里洛一家不得不搬走。大约有四个月的时间，他们睡在一辆丰田汉兰达（Toyota Highlander）车里。他们经常在沃尔玛停车场过夜，白天则待在图书馆和有免费 Wi-Fi 的麦当劳，以便他提交求职申请。

“I was [practically] getting 1,000 job alerts a day on my email,” he said.

“我每天的电子邮箱里几乎能收到 1,000 条职位提醒，”他说。

Then, in March 2024, Ciriello got what he calls a “cryptic” message on LinkedIn, advertising a job as a “content writer”. He initially assumed it was a scam. He replied anyway.

接着，在 2024 年 3 月，西里洛在 LinkedIn 上收到了一条他称之为“神秘”的消息，招聘“内容作者”。他起初以为是诈骗，但还是回复了。

Only after he started the job did he realize what it actually involved: training artificial intelligence models.

直到开始工作后，他才意识到这份工作的实际内容：训练人工智能模型。

Giriello is one of five skilled workers aged 50 and older who spoke to the Guardian about how, after struggling to find work in their fields, they have turned to an emerging and growing category of work: using their expertise to train artificial intelligence models.

西里洛是五位接受《卫报》采访的 50 岁及以上资深员工之一。他们讲述了在各自领域挣扎求职后，如何转向一个新兴且不断增长的职业类别：利用专业知识训练 AI 模型。

Known as data annotation, the work involves labeling and evaluating the information used to train AI models like Open AI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. A doctor, for example, might review how an AI model answers medical questions to flag incorrect or unsafe responses and suggest better ones, helping the system learn how to generate more accurate and reliable responses. The ultimate goal of training is to level up AI modelsuntil they’re capable of doing a job as well as a human could – meaning they could someday replace some of these human workers.

这种工作被称为“数据标注”（data annotation），包括对用于训练 OpenAI 的 ChatGPT 或 Google 的 Gemini 等模型的信息进行标记和评估。例如，一名医生可能会检查 AI 模型如何回答医学问题，标记出错误或不安全的回答，并给出更好的建议，从而帮助系统学会生成更准确、可靠的响应。训练的最终目标是提升 AI 模型的水平，直到它们能像人类一样胜任工作——这意味着它们有朝一日可能会取代这些人类员工。

The companies behind AI training, such as Mercor, GlobalLogic, TEKsystems, micro1 and Alignerr, operate large contractor networks staffed by people like Ciriello. Their clients include tech giants like OpenAI, Google and Meta, academic researchers and industries including healthcare and finance.

AI 训练背后的公司，如 Mercor、GlobalLogic、TEKsystems、micro1 和 Alignerr，运营着庞大的承包商网络，西里洛这样的人就在其中工作。他们的客户包括 OpenAI、谷歌和 Meta 等科技巨头，以及学术研究机构和医疗、金融等行业。

For experienced professionals, AI training contracts can be a side hustle – or a temporary fallback following a layoff – where top experts can, in some cases, earn over $180 an hour. But that’s on the high end. For some older workers like Ciriello, it represents another thing entirely: a last refuge in a brutal job market that is harder to stay in, or re-enter, the older they get. For many of them, whether or not they’re training their AI replacements in their professions is besides the point. They need the work now.

对于经验丰富的专业人士来说，AI 训练合同可以是一份副业，或者是裁员后的临时退路，顶级专家在某些情况下每小时收入可超过 180 美元。但这属于高端收入。对于像西里洛这样的一些年长工人来说，它代表了完全不同的意义：在残酷的就业市场中最后的避难所——年纪越大，留在这个市场或重新进入就越难。对他们中的许多人来说，是否在训练专业领域的 AI 替代品已经不重要了，他们现在需要这份工作。

US workers over age 60 take about 50% longer to find new jobs than people in their 20s and 30s – and only a fraction regain their previous earning levels, says Richard Johnson, vice-president of the AARP Public Policy Institute, who researches how age bias impacts job outcomes. He told the Guardian that employers may erroneously view older workers as more expensive, lacking current skills and harder to train than younger people.

AARP 公共政策研究所副院长理查德·约翰逊专门研究年龄偏见如何影响就业结果。他告诉《卫报》，60 岁以上的美国工人找新工作的时间比 20 多岁和 30 多岁的人长约 50%，且只有极少数人能恢复到以前的收入水平。他表示，雇主可能会错误地认为年长员工比年轻人更贵、缺乏现代技能且更难培训。

• 工作： 很平淡的一天，但是真的累的要睡着了，感觉强大的数据库匹配真的又简单又便捷，想融入自己生活里利用起来，但不知从何做起。｜正职们在讨论假期去哪 哈萨克斯坦等等，属实羡慕但又觉得我现在明明是更加自由的时候，可以趁工作日淡季出去玩，这个阶段全勤牛马工作好像更是一种浪费。｜隔壁从未说过话的实习生主动跟我social了，导师我的饭搭子是你的师妹。
• 学校：丝毫未动同昨天【论文】还差图表编辑、公式排版、插文献、案例分析求证。【项目中期】一点没开始。【zz报告】已经不打算干了。
• 杭州的班： linkedin已更新，自制素材没跑出去决定放弃，paige品已寄，公司把所有数据表完全迭代，私密性便捷性有效性都更上一层楼，感叹搭建的人，感叹AI。
• 今天下班后：下班先去健健身跳跳舞活动一下，预计40min。｜昨天睡前想完成的事并没有做到，今天继续。｜过了把瘾买了好多新衣服，好想旅游。｜哎真的提不起一点精神怎么办求解