Your old work pages could turn into cold hard cash — if you own the rights to them.
In the latest example of the AI industry’s hunger for training data, Handshake AI hiring a Professional Document Contributor, promising up to $30,000 for “high-quality written documents.”
To qualify, applicants should have worked in fields such as consulting, finance, legal, software engineering, and data science. The AI training firm said that the applicants must own the documents and be authorized to share them.
It raises a host of compliance and privacy-related questions. Which work-related documents are yours to share? And how much private work material should AI know?
Feed me your work docs
Handshake AI puts a price on your pages: $6.
The firm will pay accepted candidates $6 per page for up to 50 documents, each of which may contain up to 100 pages. The position’s payment is capped at $30,000.
Importantly, the pages must be “accepted” to lead to a payout. The position does not make clear what qualifies a document for acceptance.
And no, your slide decks and presentations are “generally not eligible.” They’re looking for written text, like Word documents and PDFs.
“This is not a traditional full-time role,” the job description reads. “You’ll submit your information once and, if qualified, be invited to participate in document contribution projects as opportunities become available.”
AI training firms are paying for broad datasets. You can get paid to fold laundry, or have a free cleaner come to your apartment — so long as they can film it for AI robots. Still, these firms often have stringent rules, which can limit payouts.
What documents do you own?
To submit your documents, you have to own them. Thomas Ahlering, a partner at King & Spalding specializing in data privacy, shared his concerns.
First: what will your data help train? “It’s unclear whether they’re their own models, or whether or not they’re going to be transferring this data,” he said.
He also worried about potential copyright issues. “Who owns these documents?” he asked. “What vetting is there in place to make sure there’s not confidential info?”
I asked Handshake AI how it would verify ownership of the documents. A company representative did not respond.
Proving ownership can be tricky. There are some easy no-go cases, like work created for an employer. Spoiler alert: your company likely owns your work.
What about when it’s made for a client? Or if it’s made for yourself but includes sensitive information about past business? “I think that’s a gray area,” Ahlering said.
For those looking to make a quick buck, it’s probably not the best idea to ask your manager to sign over document rights. “I think most employers would be uncomfortable with that,” Ahlering said.
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