(Wired) – Mercor is one of a few firms that OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI labs rely on to generate training data for their models. The company hires massive networks of human contractors to generate bespoke, proprietary datasets for these labs, which are typically kept highly secret as they’re a core ingredient in the recipe to generate valuable AI models that power products like ChatGPT and Claude Code. AI labs are sensitive about this data because it can reveal to competitors—including other AI labs in the US and China—key details about the ways they train AI models. It’s unclear at this time whether the data exposed in Mercor’s breach would meaningfully help a competitor. (Read More)