Inside Job

A college student takes a $50-an-hour job training artificial intelligence and ends up making $70,000 in a single year. But behind the money is a hidden world of digital labor, where real people shape how AI thinks, responds, and sounds—and where the work is already starting to disappear. In this episode of Inside Job, host Matt Sunbulli profiles Isaiah, a college-age AI trainer, and together they take listeners inside a hidden layer of the tech economy. What they uncover reveals the human force behind AI—and raises urgent questions about where this work is headed and what it means for all of us.

Inside Job host and creator Matt Sunbulli and executive producer Aaron Calafato set the stage for the new series, preview upcoming stories, and explain why starting with listening first and honoring the real experiences of job seekers and workers matters more than ever as AI reshapes the future of work. In doing so, they show what sets this podcast apart from others in the career space today. *If you have a story to share, an episode idea or want to join our community visit: insidejobpodcast.com

Hosted by Matt Sunbulli and executive produced by Aaron Calafato, this pilot episode of the Inside Job Podcast pulls back the curtain on one of the fastest-growing and least understood roles in the economy: AI data work. We hear from Krista, a longtime data worker in Michigan, whose job is to quietly shape the intelligence behind the tools millions of people use every day. “I’m teaching AI how to talk… how to see… how to think.” But behind the promise of AI is something far more human: A living room turned into a workplace A constant search for tasks and income Ethical dilemmas about the work itself The isolation that comes with invisible labor What sounds like cutting-edge technology is, in reality, a marketplace of clicks, decisions, and human judgment. This episode introduces a new kind of storytelling about work, inspired by Working by Studs Terkel, capturing not just how people make a living, but how they make sense of it. Because behind every “intelligent” system…there’s still a person.