Analysis and updates
Analysis of the AI expert-work market, and updates from the platforms, research and conferences that shape it. Part of the Sidequest guides library.
Why Frontier Labs Pay a Premium for Domain Experts
Generic annotation is being automated away while expert evaluation budgets keep growing. The economic logic behind the split — and what it means for professionals.
Hiring Signals: What Expert Platforms Are Recruiting for This Quarter
A roundup of the role types appearing most across Mercor, micro1, and other expert marketplaces — and what their screens now emphasize.
4 min read
Conference Watch: Benchmark Saturation Is a Hiring Signal
Every saturated benchmark at a major ML conference is followed by a harder, expert-written replacement — and those replacements are built by paid domain experts.
4 min read
From RLHF to Expert Feedback: The Research Behind Your Evaluation Job
Your evaluation job exists because of a specific research lineage — from the original human-feedback loop to today's expert-graded reasoning models. A plain-language tour.
6 min read