Artificial Intelligence is slowly taking over the digital platform. With several major players like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grammarly, Character AI, Outlier AI, and several more. One of the tools among these is Outlier AI. This tool is meant to help freelancers. Their model is to pay their users to train this tool for futuristic possibilities.
In this blog, we are going to learn about the tool, history and background, how it works ,and more.
About Outlier AI – What is it?
Outlier AI is a platform that has been design to connect professionals in subject matter in fields. Such as law, computer science, maths, and more, with projects that would help train, evaluate, and improve generative AI models. In simpler language, it’s an online platform that helps improve AI systems. By connecting them with real people who are professionals in particular fields.
History and background
The AI platform was founded and launch by Scale AI in 2023. It must be kept in mind that the original Outlier AI shall not be confuse with this. That was found by Sean Byrnes in 2015 and is a different concept altogether. Scale AI conceptualiz and launched this platform to connect real experts and freelancers with AI training programs and projects.
Scale AI is a renowned American company located in San Francisco. It has specialised the operations on data annotations and model evaluation, mostly for artificial intelligence applications. It was found by Alexander Wang and Lucy Guo in 2016. Outlier AI is consider to be one of Scale AI’s most popular and significant inventions in recent years.
How Outlier AI Works
AI is still a fairly new concept in many parts of the world, but with the right approach, it might be easier to understand the concept. Here’s how Outlier AI works:
It connects experts globally with AI projects
Outlier AI is well-known for bringing professionals or experts with specialized knowledge in fields like math, law, coding etc,, and gives them an opportunity to work on online projects that help train and improve AI systems.
Diversity in tasks is offer
The tasks offer by Outlier AI are diverse but specialize, and they can range from labelling data, checking if AI-generated answers are correct, writing new Q&A, and several more. The ultimate goal is to help train AI systems.
Allows users to choose and track projects
Experts are allow to select the projects they want to work on. Based on the kind of stuff they want to work on, and their availability of time. The progress made by them can be follow on the Outlier AI dashboard. Naturally, the payment depends on the quality of work submite
Human feedback makes things better
This is a classic textbook for proving that AI can never really replace humans. By having real people review and correct the nuance mistakes, AI systems can learn and become more accurate and useful.
Is Outlier AI a fraud/scam?
Despite the reviews you might have read, while going through reviews on sites like Quora, it is important to note that Outlier AI is not a scam – it’s quite legit, especially backed and support by Scale AI, a well-known company in the AI industry.
In fact, Outlier has connect skill freelancers with paid projects that improve artificial intelligence projects – it seems like everyone is a winner actually.
However, there are several controversies and reasons involved, which might make it seem notoriously known for being a ‘scamster company’:
Payment-related issues
There have been several complaints made by professionals and experts regarding the payment delays, and in some extreme cases, absolute non-payment of complete work.
A lot of users using sites like Quora and Reddit have, in fact, shown their open frustration for the platform and have blatantly called Outlier AI ‘scamsters’, ‘frauds’, and several more things because they either know people who had a bad experience, read reviews, or had a bad experience themselves.
Unrewarding Work
It’s only fair that people who are good at doing something will not do it for free, and especially if the project is quite daunting and long-drawn, they do it all the more with some expectation in mind.
A lot of freelancers have described spending days putting in their time and effort, only to be unreward without pay, or immediately given a new task.
Lack of Transparency
There is very little information publicly available on Outlier AI’s platforms and operations. In fact, their website and even LinkedIn profiles reveal little to no information about their work, which creates a miscommunication or lack of transparency. This makes users question the company’s legitimacy.
Lack of Communication and support
Lots of workers have experienced situations where they needed support from the management. But no one answered, thus making it quite a difficult situation. Some even mention that emails and messages have gone unanswered for days.
Abrupt Account bans
There have been cases where, after workers or users end up investing enough time or even wait for their pay after a job well done, the accounts in question get banne without a detail justification. This is quite a red flag in terms of work and pay.
Pros and Cons of Working at Outlier AI
Despite the reviews that you might have read, it is always important to read about the pros and cons of a company before considering putting in time and effort.
We have worked out a comparison analysis that highlights the pros and cons:
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Flexible working hours is possibly the biggest pro of working at Outlier AI as you have the liberty to work from anywhere, and even set your own hours. | Sometimes the tasks offered may not be consistent enough – in the sense, sometimes there is excessive work, and on some days there are barely any tasks to complete. |
| The pay rates can vary, but they are competitive as skilled workers can work for a high pay of about $20 to $40 per hour. | Despite high pay rates, there is a huge gap between the promise and the actual delivery. A lot of workers have complained about not being paid after completing their work. |
| Interesting and unique work tasks are good enough to keep workers engaged and interested in completing the job on time. | There is no training period for the workers; they are forced to work on the given tasks irrespective of whether they truly have any orientation or not |
| Skill and career growth is another major advantage of working with Outlier AI as this allows development not just for the workers with theoretical and practical knowledge but also offers scope for improvements in AI systems. | There is job instability at play here. Several users have reviewed on completing their work on time, and with the effort put in, but no rewards, no incentives, and possibly fired by being ‘ghosted’. |
Rating snapshots of Outlier AI
Over the years, several users and professionals have given a rather unique form of rating for the company. Some have given positive reviews, whereas many have given it a poor rating on average. Here are some trusted job review sites:
- On Glassdoor, Outlier AI has been rate 3.2 out of 5 stars on average with most employees describing. As a decent opportunity to work, but they have raised concerns about job security, support, and payment.
- On Indeed, the company has been rated as low as 2.4 stars on an average, with several workers highlighting the unpredictability of work, lack of job security, sudden account issues, and unreliable pay.
Conclusion – Is Outlier your friend or foe?
In conclusion, Outlier AI is a legit company theres no doubt about that. But there is a huge debate on whether it is an ideal place for job-seekers or freelancers looking to upgrade their skills for money. Although it is a good place to work, the unhappy review have a scathing ratio compared to the happy ones. All this is good enough proof to show us that AI cannot replace humans because a company run by humans would, in the first place, never ‘ghost’ their employees.
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