Amanda Overcash, a single mom in Texas, spends her days working in real estate. At night, after her daughter has gone to bed, she opens up her laptop at the kitchen table and starts her second job: training AI.
Headphones in and wearing pajamas, Overcash spends hours reviewing chatbot responses, transcribing audio clips, and labeling images.
“Sometimes, I’m at the kitchen table until midnight,” she told Business Insider. Other nights, she sets a 4 a.m. alarm to fit in an extra hour before her day job.
Overcash is part of a global, largely invisible workforce that underpins the AI boom, working to improve how models respond in the real world.
While some contract workers training AI have had negative experiences, Overcash says hers has been largely positive.
And it can pay well — up to $40 an hour. Last summer, Overcash earned nearly $8,000 in under three weeks from writing and rating chatbot responses.
She told BI the job isn’t as easy as some people online make it out to be and that it’s not a “get rich quick” scheme. Some projects can be demanding, the audit processes can be tough, and juggling it alongside a full-time job can risk burnout.
She juggles various projects on multiple platforms
Overcash, who is in her 30s, has spent over six years in the AI data industry and taken on projects like ad moderation, transcription, and prompt evaluation. Like many freelancers in the space, she juggles work across multiple platforms — a setup Business Insider has verified.
Platforms like Appen, OneForma, Prolific, Outlier (owned by Scale AI), and Amazon Mechanical Turk rely on freelancers like Overcash to train and test AI models and products. Appen alone has a base of over 1 million contractors in 200 countries, according to its website.
Across different platforms and projects, contributors might label satellite images, transcribe voice memos, review chatbot outputs, and even upload pet videos. Pay rates depend on the project and its level of difficulty, Overcash said.
“LLM projects usually pay closer to $20 an hour,” she said, referring to large language models, which power generative AI, “while social media or transcription ones can be anywhere from $9 to $11. But the LLM stuff is a lot more difficult and extensive.”
An Appen spokesperson told BI that although the industry is trending away from simpler data annotation tasks to “more complex” generative AI work, “human expertise remains essential to AI model development.”
She reviews chatbot answers, voice memos, and social media ads
Right now, Overcash is working on two main projects. One involves transcribing casual voice memos, clips that sound like WhatsApp messages, often recorded in cafés, cars, or noisy kitchens.
“They’re supposed to sound natural,” she said. “But it’s hard sometimes. You hear street noise, people eating, conversations in the background.”
She’s also reviewing social media ads. She opens each one, watches the video or reads the caption, and then answers a series of yes/no questions about nudity, profanity, misleading claims, age appropriateness, and whether she enjoyed the ad. Based on those factors, each ad gets a star rating.
She said this type of job is one of her favorites because she doesn’t have to second-guess her answers as much. “It’s easy work. If you get in a rhythm, you can move fast,” she said.
She made nearly $8,000 in 3 weeks
Other projects are more intense and demanding. Last summer, Overcash worked up to 16 hours a day on a chatbot evaluation project.
She started at $22 an hour, which increased to $40 an hour as the project went on, bringing in nearly $8,000 in under three weeks. (BI has verified copies of her pay slips.) The job involved reviewing chatbot answers to medical questions, political statements, and personal advice and flagging anything misleading or unsafe.
“If someone asked about a lump on their breast and the bot didn’t tell them to seek medical attention, I had to mark it as unsafe,” she said. Overcash recalled working quickly because of strict time limits on prompts, with usually four to six minutes per review.
‘It doesn’t feel like easy money’
At times, the work can be rewarding. “When you get into the flow, it feels good,” Overcash said. “You’re focused, you know exactly what you’re doing — I like that about it.”
She also enjoys the variety. “If you’re good at transcribing, or labeling, or languages, there’s something for you,” she said. “Some projects are so easy, I could teach my teenager to do them.”
But she’s clear about the trade-offs. “Forty dollars an hour sounds great, but when you’re glued to your laptop all day, it doesn’t feel like easy money,” she said. “This is still work — and it can be stressful. It’s definitely not a fast way to make money.”
The onboarding and audits are tough
Getting onto projects isn’t easy. Overcash said many platforms require rigorous literacy and guideline tests, which are assessments based on lengthy instruction manuals that outline how to rate or label different types of content. Passing them is often required before starting paid work, and getting to that point can take time, especially when there are long waitlists.
“It’s a grueling process to get on,” she said. “Some tests took me days to complete.”
Once accepted onto a platform, the pressure doesn’t let up. Contractors at some companies are audited regularly, she said — sometimes without warning and usually without much feedback. A single failed audit, Overcash said, can cost freelancers access to work for the day — or get them removed entirely from a project.
“You think you’re doing great,” she said. “Then you get hit with a bad test result. If your scores drop, they’ll cut you.”
She balances multiple jobs, but knows her limits
Overcash said she burned out two years ago and had to reduce her AI side hustle. Now, she sets clearer boundaries to avoid getting overwhelmed.
“My rule is I don’t work weekends,” she said. “Even if I haven’t hit my hours.” That time, she said, is reserved for her daughter.
She said her hours are flexible. “Some days I’ll do two hours. Other days I’ll hit eight.”
Not every experience in this space is positive. Overcash said she’s mostly had good projects, but she knows the industry can be unpredictable.
Some platforms have come under scrutiny. Scale AI, one of the biggest players in the industry, is facing multiple lawsuits from taskers, some of whom say they were exposed to harmful prompts involving suicide, domestic violence, and animal abuse without adequate mental health support. The company is also under investigation by the US Department of Labor for its use of contractors.
Scale AI previously told BI it would continue to defend itself against what it sees as false or misleading allegations about its business practices.
Overcash said she finds value in the work she does across various platforms. “It’s definitely made me sharper. I’ve gotten better at spotting issues or bias in language just from doing this for so long.”
Even though the job isn’t always easy, it offers what she needs: flexibility, steady income, and control over her time.
“It’s not a fast way to make money,” she said. “But if you get into a rhythm, it helps. It’s helped me pay bills, stay afloat, and show up for my daughter.”
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