In India, a radiologist training AI models might earn pay of 100,000 rupees (US$1,200/RM5,312) for a few hours of work, said Hardik Dave, founder and chief executive of Indika AI, a popular data labeling firm. The average contractor makes about a third of that a month, he said. — Reuters
In the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, dozens of data experts perfect artificial intelligence models from offices framed by majestic Himalayan peaks. The employees at iMerit aren’t there to train AI in rudimentary tasks like recognising "brown cat on a windowsill” in an image. Instead, they’re teaching algorithms the anatomy of the human eye or how to detect changes in geospatial maps.
Backed by three Silicon Valley billionaires, iMerit is part of a growing cohort of companies building a more sophisticated, monetisable and reliable version of AI, an industry on track to add nearly US$20 trillion (RM88.53 trillion) to the global economy by 2030. As models become smarter, big business is increasingly looking to harness their power for highly specialised tasks, spawning dozens of data services startups devoted to customising applications across sectors like finance, health care and defense.
