The intelligence of an AI is directly linked to the quality of the human feedback it receives. Unfortunately, that feedback is being compromised by a single, relentless factor: the ticking clock. The human trainers who guide AI models are being forced to work under such rushed deadlines that they are inadvertently making the AI dumber, not smarter.
Workers in the field describe a dramatic acceleration of their work. One rater explained how the time limit for her tasks was slashed in half, from 30 minutes to 15. This meant she had to read, fact-check, and rate a 500-word AI response in a quarter of an hour. This frantic pace makes thoughtful analysis impossible and encourages a “check-the-box” mentality.
This rush to complete tasks has a direct impact on the AI’s quality. When trainers don’t have time to properly research a topic, they are more likely to approve incorrect or “hallucinated” information. When they don’t have time to carefully consider the nuances of a prompt, they might rate a subtly harmful response as acceptable. Each rushed judgment call degrades the quality of the training data.
This issue was flagged by a contract worker in a letter to Congress, where he warned that the pace imposed on trainers would lead to a “faulty” product. His warning has been validated by a string of public AI failures. The industry’s obsession with speed is creating a vicious cycle: the faster the trainers are forced to work, the more mistakes the AI makes, and the dumber it ultimately becomes.