OpenAI has quietly hired hundreds of international contractors to train its artificial intelligence in software engineering, according to a report from Semafor.
Some contractors, hired in the last 6 months from places like Latin America and Eastern Europe, have reportedly been tasked with creating data to coach AI to learn simple software engineering tasks.
While OpenAI already has a product called Codex, which can convert natural language into working code, the company's hiring spree indicates that it's looking to advance that technology, potentially creating a working replacement for some human coders.
Semafor spoke to one engineer in South America who interviewed for one of OpenAI's contractor roles. As part of the process, he was tasked with finding bugs in AI code and providing explanations for how to fix its mistakes. The engineer told Semafor he thinks the company wants to feed the training data into its AI technology.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
OpenAI is also the owner of the buzzy AI chatbot, ChatGPT. Since the bot's launch late last year, it has already threatened to disrupt education, journalism, and law. Software engineering might be added to the list next.
In fact, Insider recently reported that some Amazon employees have already started using ChatGPT to help with coding, though the company warned its employees not to share confidential corporate information with the bot.
