Suit charges SF’s Scale AI with misclassifying workers, wage theft
A San Francisco-based artificial-intelligence startup misclassified workers as contractors and failed to pay them the money they were owed or give them paid breaks, according to a new class-action lawsuit.
Scale AI hires people to help fine-tune other companies’ generative AI models. Generative AI is the version of the technology that can mimic human speech, writing or human-created images in response to queries or prompts.
Although the workers Scale hired meet the state’s definition of employees, the startup treats them as contractors, according to the suit, which was filed Tuesday in the California Superior Court in San Francisco. As such, it doesn’t pay them for overtime, doesn’t pay for their work-related expenses like internet access or electricity use, and often doesn’t pay them for the training it requires of them, the lawsuit alleges.
“Scale AI is the sordid underbelly propping up the generative AI industry,” charged the suit, filed on behalf of Steve McKinney, a former contractor at the company.
