Uber Expands Gig Economy to Welcome Freelance Coders for AI Initiatives -

Uber Technologies has expanded its gig-economy workforce to include programmers. The company is diversifying its operations beyond ridesharing to explore a flourishing new sector: aiding other businesses in outsourcing parts of their artificial intelligence development to independent contractors.

The newly launched AI training and data labeling division, named Scaled Solutions, builds on an internal team that manages extensive annotation tasks for Uber’s rideshare, food delivery, and freight operations. According to its website, Scaled Solutions has started providing services to other companies in need of high-quality datasets. Key clients include Aurora Innovation Inc., an Uber-backed firm focusing on self-driving software for commercial trucks, and Niantic, the game developer famous for Pokémon Go.

Uber’s interest in data labeling services hasn’t been previously reported. This venture could allow the company to seize a slice of a growing market as global organizations rely on human input to validate data for training AI models. Scale AI, with a valuation of $14 billion, is recognized as one of the leading startups in the artificial intelligence space, providing similar services.

The rideshare giant has extensive experience in recruiting contractors, having engaged drivers and couriers for years. With optimism, the company looks forward to supporting other businesses by hiring enough skilled workers who can label images, text, and videos with contextual information to enhance machine learning models’ ability to identify patterns and deliver accurate predictions and recommendations.

To broaden this service offering, Uber has recently begun onboarding contractors with diverse skill sets in India, the US, Canada, Poland, and Nicaragua. Payment will vary according to task completion and will be issued monthly, as detailed in the FAQ section of its onboarding site, distinct from the recruitment platform for drivers and delivery couriers.

Additionally, there are job openings for account executives based in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago who will manage Uber’s relationships with Scaled Solutions’ enterprise clients.

“Having executed these tasks at scale over the past decade as part of our growth, we possess a profound understanding of the needs of businesses seeking these services,” an Uber spokesperson stated in an email. Hiring independent contractors aligns “with our expertise as one of the world’s largest providers of flexible work opportunities,” the spokesperson added.

The company chose not to disclose revenue numbers or customer counts, nor did it provide details about its pricing model for projects.

Uber’s internal Scaled Solutions team operates in the US and India and employs a combination of human resources and automated systems to aid in map validation and precise translations, adapting its rideshare service across various markets. The team has also digitized restaurant menu images for the Uber Eats app and tested new features on thousands of mobile devices.

Externally, the team is assisting Aurora to ensure accuracy in its software’s object identification, including pedestrians, debris, and other vehicles, as explained by an Aurora spokesperson. Moreover, Uber’s contractors have evaluated location data for Niantic, which aims to build a 3D map of the world for its augmented reality experiences and additional gaming projects, according to Erin Schaefer, Niantic’s senior vice president overseeing game publishing and operations.

Furthermore, Uber plans to hire workers to utilize their cultural insights for customizing products for local markets or applying their programming skills to assess an AI chatbot’s responses concerning software engineering queries.

Before launching the platform to the public, Uber began recruiting freelancers with coding or linguistic capabilities to assist in evaluating the outputs of large language models, which underpin generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Corp’s Copilot.

An anonymous software engineer in India reported being given two AI-generated responses to a complex coding question and was asked to compare and rate the accuracy of these answers based on several criteria, including functionality, efficiency, and code formatting, as per documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. The engineer shared that they completed three queries for a payment of 200 rupees ($2.37) per set.

It is still unclear how wages will vary across the various locations where Uber is onboarding contractors for Scaled Solutions. The tasks available resemble those on existing annotation platforms like Scale AI’s Remotasks or Data Annotation Tech, which have attracted remote workers looking for supplementary income through online gig work.

This industry has also faced scrutiny for underpaying outsourced workers in developing countries. For instance, Remotasks claims on its website to offer up to $18 per hour to English-speaking, US-based workers, yet a report by The Verge indicated that a Remotasks worker in Nairobi earned approximately $10 for annotating 8 hours of video footage for self-driving cars.

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