Inside the Hidden World of an AI Data Worker

This pilot episode of the Inside Job Podcast pulls back the curtain on one of the fastest-growing and least understood roles in the economy: AI data work.

We hear from Krista, a longtime data worker in Michigan, whose job is to quietly shape the intelligence behind the tools millions of people use every day.

“I’m teaching AI how to talk… how to see… how to think.”

But behind the promise of AI is something far more human:

• A living room turned into a workplace

• A constant search for tasks and income

• Ethical dilemmas about the work itself

• The isolation that comes with invisible labor

What sounds like cutting-edge technology is, in reality, a marketplace of clicks, decisions, and human judgment.

This episode introduces a new kind of storytelling about work, inspired by Working by Studs Terkel, capturing not just how people make a living, but how they make sense of it.

Because behind every “intelligent” system…there’s still a person.