How humans contribute to AI development

On October 5, 2026, CBS News' '60 Minutes' featured Mercor, a rapidly growing AI data company valued at over a billion dollars. The show highlighted how Mercor uses more than 100,000 freelancers to train AI models with human expertise in fields such as finance, architecture, and poetry. The segment showcased a winemaker, a music producer, and a physician who is training AI to interpret lab results accurately. Nick Bilton, executive producer of '60 Minutes' and former tech journalist, emphasized the show's goal to demonstrate AI's advancements while using the technology in storytelling. Behind the scenes, the show used Runway's AI to create a version of correspondent Jon Wertheim's studio intro, which was originally written by humans. The piece underscored the importance of human input in training AI models, as these systems require more data than they can gather from the internet alone.