Lawsuit Exposes The Ugly Truth Of Working For The Top Generative AI Company In Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley wonderkid, Alexandr Wang, his his $13.8 billion dollar company, Scale AI, is under fire after the company was hit with a lawsuit by a former employee accusing the company and Wang of committing wage theft and misclassifying workers.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court by ex-employee Steve McKinney. McKinney seeks to represent a proposed class of current and former California contractors in a class-action suit against the company and its leadership, including 27-year-old billionaire CEO Alexandr Wang.

One of ScaleAI's spokesman gave a statement to local media, saying:

“We do not comment on litigation but are committed to ensuring we are in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

Squeezing Workers dry and underpaying them

McKinney’s allegeded that ScaleAI had built its reputation and financial success by exploiting workers by forcing workers to work overtime and denying to pay them for their extra work hours.

Mckinney also accused the company of exerting unnecessary control over its employees, including taking periodic screenshots of its employees and monitoring the computer usages of employees.

He also accuses the company of reassigning workers to projects with varying pay rates and docking pay for tasks that take longer than estimated.

Controversial Content Moderation Tasks

Mckkiney also accused the company of something even more sinister-it involves the nature of the tasks assigned to contractors. The lawsuit claims workers were required to engage with “obscene and distressing subject matter,” such as answering prompts related to disturbing and graphic topics.

McKinney gave an example, saying that he was forced to respond to content involving suicidal ideation and other distressing scenarios, which he says has left workers traumatized.

AI companies often rely on contractors to wade through sensitive content and examples in order to provide safe and harmless answers for customers, and ScaleAI isn't the first company guilty of such practices.

Similar concerns have been raised about contractors at other AI companies, such as Sama, which reportedly assigned workers to review sensitive content for minimal pay.

One of McKinney's lawyers, Glenn Danas, said

"If companies like ScaleAI are not held accountable, humans will continue to be exploited to train this unregulated technology for profit"

The lawsuit seeks restitution, punitive damages, and a fundamental change in Scale’s worker classification model.