In March, Dozen of contractors hired by Invisible Technologies to train the language model behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT were laid off. Internal Slack screenshots obtained by Insider showed that Invisible Technology laid off 31 contractors as of March 16. The contractors are responsible for a variety of tasks, from improving OpenAI’s coding skills to enhancing its creative writing capabilities, that help create more effective bots.
Kamron Palizban, Vice President of Operations at Invisible, addressed the layoffs during an all-staff meeting in March. Palizban said that OpenAI wanted to reduce its contractor workforce due to changing business needs. Many of those laid off were working on projects that didn’t generate a high enough return on investment for OpenAI.
The layoffs provide a glimpse into the data-training practices of OpenAI, something that has largely been kept secret from the public. Invisible’s relationship with OpenAI began in February 2021, when OpenAI hired close to 1,000 data trainers from places such as Eastern Europe and Latin America.
In February 2022, however, contracting firm Sama terminated its partnership with OpenAI after discovering that its data labelers in Kenya were reviewing offensive and potentially illegal content.
In response, an OpenAI spokesperson said, “Classifying and filtering harmful [text and images] is a necessary step in minimizing the amount of violent and sexual content included in training data and creating tools that can detect harmful content.”
Invisible’s data trainers were responsible for evaluating the responses of bots when given a query and rating them on a scale of one-to-seven. They then craft what an ideal response would look like and forward it to OpenAI.
The decision to layoff contractors by both OpenAI and Invisible is driven by the desire to create a better and more efficient AI, giving users the results they need as quickly as possible. Though it may be difficult for those affected, the hope is that the AI chatbot will make conversations between humans and machines more natural and seamless.
Invisible Technologies is a San Francisco-based firm specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) and enterprise data. It provides consulting services, custom AI solutions, and engineering support to enterprise customers. The firm recently made headlines for its partnership with OpenAI to help train the language model behind ChatGPT.
Kamron Palizban is a current Vice President of Operations at Invisible Technologies with previous experience in product management, financial analysis, and strategy. He has held several senior positions, including VP of Strategy & Business Operations at Oracle and VP of Product Management at TransferWise. He addressed the recent layoffs during an all-staff meeting in March and explained that OpenAI wanted to reduce its contractor workforce due to changing business needs.
