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Slashdot: People Training OpenAI's AI Fired For Using AI To Train the AI

People Training OpenAI's AI Fired For Using AI To Train the AI
Published on 2026-09-24T23:34:00Z
404 Media reports "multiple contractors hired to improve OpenAI's models have been fired for using AI to train the AI: That's not great for the models themselves, but there is also obviously a great irony in AI training companies working for OpenAI firing people for using AI when OpenAI's whole thing is to make people use AI at work... OpenAI declined to comment on its contractors being fired for using AI. Their article cites internal documents and three contractors working on OpenAI-related projects which can include more than ten thousand contractors: One contractor said they see people using AI "all the time and people are let go for it all the time, it's pretty much the one thing that will get you kicked off ASAP." The person said, "in a group of thousands there are tons that have been caught...." Two of the sources said people have been fired or offboarded for using AI... One contractor said they used AI while helping to train OpenAI's models and shared what they presented as their termination letter. It said their employer had identified issues with the "authenticity" of their work.... 404 Media spoke to a fourth contractor who has worked on training models for various AI companies. They said they sometimes purposefully chose the worst responses because they wanted to actively sabotage the models' training. "I did feel guilty about doing this kind of work at the start," they said. "I either pay zero attention to the results and choose randomly or purposely choose the [worst] output. I'm not sure how much of a difference it actually makes since there are hundreds of other people also rating prompt results, but it does feel like I'm getting paid to make AI worse." Two of the contractors worked for Mercor, the article reports, a company which last month Nvidia reportedly discussed funding at a $20 billion valuation. Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the article.

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