Axios: “60 Minutes” : How humans make AI smarter

 ⏱️ “60 Minutes”: How humans make AI smarter
 
Mercor CEO Brendan Foody talks with “60 Minutes” correspondent Jon Wertheim. Photo: CBS News

“60 Minutes” last night went inside Mercor, the fast-growing, multibillion-dollar AI data company that uses more than 100,000 freelancers to train AI models with human expertise in finance, architecture, poetry and more.

Why it matters: AI models need more data than they can glean just by eating the internet.

The CBS News show featured a winemaker, a music producer, and a physician who’s training AI to accurately interpret lab results.

“Everything that humans want AI to be able to do, we wanna teach it how to do that,” Brendan Foody, Mercor’s 23-year-old CEO (and a paper billionaire), told “60 Minutes” correspondent Jon Wertheim at the company’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco.

Mercor, with the slogan “organizing human intelligence,” grew from 20 full-timers in January 2025 to 400 now. The unicorn’s annualized revenue soared from $1 million to $2 billion in 24 months.

Watch the segment … Read the transcript.
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About michelleclarke2015

Life event that changes all: Horse riding accident in Zimbabwe in 1993, a fractured skull et al including bipolar anxiety, chronic fatigue …. co-morbidities (Nietzche 'He who has the reason why can deal with any how' details my health history from 1993 to date). 17th 2017 August operation for breast cancer (no indications just an appointment came from BreastCheck through the Post). Trinity College Dublin Business Economics and Social Studies (but no degree) 1997-2003; UCD 1997/1998 night classes) essays, projects, writings. Trinity Horizon Programme 1997/98 (Centre for Women Studies Trinity College Dublin/St. Patrick's Foundation (Professor McKeon) EU Horizon funded: research study of 15 women (I was one of this group and it became the cornerstone of my journey to now 2017) over 9 mth period diagnosed with depression and their reintegration into society, with special emphasis on work, arts, further education; Notes from time at Trinity Horizon Project 1997/98; Articles written for Irishhealth.com 2003/2004; St Patricks Foundation monthly lecture notes for a specific period in time; Selection of Poetry including poems written by people I know; Quotations 1998-2017; other writings mainly with theme of social justice under the heading Citizen Journalism Ireland. Letters written to friends about life in Zimbabwe; Family history including Michael Comyn KC, my grandfather, my grandmother's family, the O'Donnellan ffrench Blake-Forsters; Moral wrong: An acrimonious divorce but the real injustice was the Catholic Church granting an annulment – you can read it and make your own judgment, I have mine. Topics I have written about include annual Brain Awareness week, Mashonaland Irish Associataion in Zimbabwe, Suicide (a life sentence to those left behind); Nostalgia: Tara Hill, Co. Meath.
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