Alibaba · China · U.S. · Rest of World
ByteDance’s Xpert, released in 2025, confirms it has recruited more than 50,000 experts, from writers to therapists
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“In the AI era, what can middle-aged people do after getting laid off?” MeetChances posted on social network RedNote, Xiaohongshu i Xiaohongshu Xiaohongshu, which translates to “little red book” in Chinese, is a lifestyle e-commerce and social media platform. in Chinese, in June.
Key facts
- It usually takes a few hours to complete a task, which earns them 100 to 500 yuan ($15 to $74), they say
- ByteDance’s Xpert, launched in 2025, says it has recruited more than 50,000 experts, from writers to therapists
- In June, China’s National Data Administration threw its support behind building “high quality data sets,” and called for more industry experts to be brought deeper into data annotation to raise
- In recent months, Chinese AI labs have narrowed their gap with Silicon Valley in building models that excel at general reasoning and coding
Summary
Chinese tech giants are recruiting skilled professionals as specialized AI trainers to build high-quality data sets. Facing economic downturns and layoffs, professionals take these challenging annotation gigs as supplementary income. The efforts mirror U.S. platforms like Mercor and Handshake hiring domain experts to narrow the technological gap with Silicon Valley. As a Shenzhen-based architect in her 40s, Cuicui has vast experience designing public stadiums, schools, and hospitals at an architecture firm. To keep paying her mortgage and cover her child’s extracurricular fees, Cuicui became a specialized AI trainer.