In the dystopian gig economy of 2026, meet Mercor: the startup that’s basically paying laid-off workers to hand over the keys to their own obsolescence. Picture video editors captioning clips that will train AI to edit videos better than them, journalists critiquing robo-articles that might replace their bylines, all while joking, “I’m literally training my replacement.” It’s dark humor wrapped in economic desperation—contractors get tracked like they’re cheating on a test, some even get caught using AI to rate AI (meta!), and the company fires then rehires them at lower pay. Because nothing screams job security like building the robot that’s about to steal your paycheck.
Tech Startup Hiring Desperate Unemployed People to Teach AI to Do Their Old Jobs
