In this episode, Matt Sunbulli (Host) steps inside the hidden world of AI work through two different stories. First, we meet Krista, a longtime AI data worker who has spent more than a decade doing the invisible labor behind recommendation systems, chatbots, generative AI, facial recognition, and data labeling. From her living room in Michigan, Krista explains what it really means to chase tasks across platforms, weigh pay rates against ethics, and live with the instability of work that most people never see.

Then we meet Isaiah, a Northwestern student who stumbled into a $50-an-hour job training AI. What began as a vague recruiter message turned into rent money, long hours, and a front-row seat to how quickly AI models learn. For Isaiah, AI wasn’t just a headline or a threat. It was a job.

Together, their stories reveal the human workforce behind artificial intelligence: the data workers, AI trainers, taskers, reviewers, and invisible laborers teaching machines how to talk, reason, see, and respond.

*Inside Job is a podcast about work told by the people who actually do it. The show is Hosted by Matt Sunbulli, Executive Produced by Aaron Calafato and is a proud member of the YAP Media Network.