Caution Required
Approach any pay-per-task contract with extreme caution. I had completed a couple of Mercor contracts that paid a satisfactory hourly rate so when a pay-per-task contract was offered, I was interested in joining the project. During onboarding, the expectation was set for initial task to take 8-9 hours but the parameters of the project were not clearly defined and a primary objective was to achieve a high degree (50%) of model failure. Mercor eventually realized how unrealistic the timeframe was and adjusted the pay structure but after working on 2 tasks, and having reviewers say they were on the right track, tasks were discarded and I received zero compensation for almost 6 weeks of work on this project. (Project Keystone) Note - Company initially stated the goal was to have 1000 tasks approved by early July. It is nearing the end of July, subject matter experts have struggled to get tasks approved and barely over 500 tasks over 5 domains have been approved. After giving them over 100 hours of my time, I feel like I was conned into providing free training for their AI model.