I Work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Used to Make TV Is Now Secretly Training AI

With work in television drying up, Ruth Fowler is looking for new ways to make the rent and, reluctantly, turns to the bizarre world of AI training. The money can be good—but the work is soul-destroying. Interviewed by AI and managed by recent graduates, Fowler enters a new hellscape, helping to build the very systems that could erode her screenwriting career even further. Bring back waiting tables.

I no longer knew what the Golden Task of my own life might look like. When given the chance to respond to details from this article, Mercor said that it strives to give workers “as much notice as possible when these projects change”—a sentiment roughly echoed by other companies. Between February and April 2026, I was hired and fired on seven different projects over four different platforms. The dismissals were always abrupt, shocking. One moment I would be typing rubrics into an Airtable, waiting in line on a 24-hour Zoom to talk through a task with a reviewer. The next, the UI would vanish. The Slack channel would disappear. The Google docs would lock me out. No message. No warning. No explanation.