Google lays off more than 200 AI contractors: Reports

They were removed in two rounds of layoffs last month without being given any prior notice.

“I was just cut off,” Andrew Lauzon, who received an email with the news of his termination on August 15, told WIRED.

“I asked for a reason, and they said ramp-down on the project—whatever that means," Lzuaaon said.

According to the news portal, he joined  Hitachi-owned GlobalLogic in March 2024 and had been working on rating AI outputs to come up with a variety of prompts to feed into the model.

“How are we supposed to feel secure in this employment when we know that we could go at any moment?” he said.

These workers were reportedly hired due to their specialist knowledge and even had PhD degrees to be a part of the 'super rater' programme.

According to internal documents viewed by WIRED, GlobalLogic seems to be using these human raters to train the Google AI system that could automatically rate the responses, with the aim of replacing them with AI.

Despite handling work they describe as skilled and high-stakes, eight workers who spoke to WIRED say they are being underpaid and suffer from lack of job security and unfavourable working conditions.

Meanwhile, Google reacted to the development and denied any responsibility for the job cuts.

“These individuals are employees of GlobalLogic or their subcontractors, not Alphabet," Courtenay Mencini, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement as quoted by WIRED.

"As the employers, GlobalLogic and their subcontractors are responsible for the employment and working conditions of their employees. We take our supplier relations seriously and audit the companies we work with against our Supplier Code of Conduct," Mencini said in the statement.