OpenAI, along with the training data company Handshake AI, is reportedly asking third-party contractors to upload real work from their past and current jobs. This information comes from a report by Wired. The request appears to be part of a broader strategy among AI companies that are hiring contractors to generate high-quality training data. The goal is for this data to eventually help their models automate more white-collar work.
In OpenAI’s case, a company presentation reportedly asks contractors to describe tasks they performed at other jobs and to upload examples of “real, on-the-job work” they have “actually done.” These examples can include concrete outputs like Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, Excel files, images, or code repositories.
The company reportedly instructs contractors to delete any proprietary or personally identifiable information before uploading and directs them to a ChatGPT tool called “Superstar Scrubbing” to assist with this process.
However, intellectual property lawyer Evan Brown told Wired that any AI lab taking this approach is “putting itself at great risk.” He noted the strategy requires “a lot of trust in its contractors to decide what is and isn’t confidential.”
An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on the report.