ANN/CHINA DAILY – Fitting the pieces of artificial intelligence together requires human involvement, leading to the creation of innovative professions and transforming the job market in today’s digital era.
As China’s AI industry experiences rapid growth, it’s not just technology that’s advancing—new job opportunities are also emerging.
According to iResearch, last year the industry’s market size reached approximately CNY509.7 billion (USD70 billion). This surge has increased demand for roles like data annotators, virtual face designers, and virtual architects, highlighting the essential synergy between human skills and machine capabilities.
In 2023, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security received over 430 proposals for new occupations, more than twice the number from 2021. Roughly a quarter of these proposals were related to the digital economy, intelligent manufacturing, information technology, and modern services. The ministry plans to announce these newly recognised professions in June.
Wang Youwei, a professor of information management and business intelligence at Fudan University in Shanghai, commented on the future. “Society will increasingly become virtual and digital,” he said. “Just as the industrial revolution liberated people from repetitive physical tasks, generative AI is expected to handle repetitive mental tasks, inevitably creating new job opportunities.”
Wang provided an example, explaining that while large AI models might replace some repetitive mental jobs in content production and customer service, roles requiring judgement and oversight of AI-generated content will become more significant.
Digital ‘Gig’ Workers
Initially, software engineers and programmers handled “data annotation,” but as the demand for data cleaning increased, it led to the emergence of “digital gig workers” in the AI sector.
Data annotators identify specific words in text or speech, outline objects in images or videos, and tag them accordingly. For example, in synonym training, they determine if two text segments are semantically identical and mark them as “yes” or “no.” These tasks don’t require advanced academic or professional qualifications but do demand understanding, discernment, and attention to detail.
Sun Danfeng, a stay-at-home mom from Zhoukou, Henan province, works as a data annotator. Despite having only a junior high school education and no prior knowledge of AI, she has become an AI trainer.
“There are four to five hundred data annotation projects on the platform I use. Some are simple, like selecting a different image from three pictures, and others are more complex,” she explained. The job offers flexibility, allowing annotators to choose their tasks and work at their convenience, provided they meet deadlines.
“For a housewife with limited educational background, finding a part-time job in a city like Zhoukou, or any smaller city, is challenging,” she said. “It’s boring to have nothing to do after the kids go to school, and it’s unpleasant to ask for money from my husband.”
Sun discovered data annotation through her college student brother when she shared her feelings of isolation and financial dependence as a full-time housewife. Due to her limited education and the competitive job market in her area, she struggled to find employment.
“This data annotation job is perfect for me,” she said. “I can earn some pocket money in my spare time, about CNY1,000 to 2,000 per month, and I am quite satisfied. My husband works in another city, and we have debts, so earning extra money for the kids is helpful.”
In 2020, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security officially recognised data annotators by including them on the national occupational classification list.
The market for data annotation has grown significantly in recent years, with projections estimating it will reach CNY20.43 billion by 2029, up from CNY4.33 billion in 2021, according to the Huaon Industrial Research Institute. This rapid growth has increased the demand for data annotators.
However, Sun Ping, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, voiced concerns about the expanding market.
“Data annotation companies, primarily outsourcing tasks and operating in a labour-intensive mode with low entry barriers, risk easy replacement of their workers, earning them the nickname ‘Internet’s Foxconn.’ Annotators are both AI trainers and ‘job gravediggers.’ When advanced algorithms are fully developed, such jobs may no longer be necessary, leaving these workers unemployed again,” she said.
Collaborative employment
Ye Cong, head of NetEase YooNexus Platform, has a more positive outlook on AI job creation.
“The digitalisation of various industries will create continuous demand to train AI in different scenarios, offering more human-AI collaborative employment opportunities. The future relationship between humans and AI is one of collaboration, not replacement,” Ye said.
NetEase’s new platform accepts data tasks from businesses and breaks them down into multiple minor projects. Users can earn points by completing the projects, which can be exchanged for wages.
In less than three years since its foundation, the platform has garnered over 1 million registered users, mainly from western and northeastern regions of China, with an even gender split, mostly aged 25 to 35 years. Monthly active users exceeded 15,000.
The platform has expanded data annotation from traditional scenarios such as AI customer service, chatbots and image generators to physical projects in the engineering machinery industry, helping robots model tasks and providing more training scenarios and data for machine intelligence.
“We focus on excavators and loaders, helping them achieve precise smart operations in mines and ports,” Ye said.
“We’re now promoting collaboration with main engine manufacturers. The ‘AI-isation’ of physical industries ensures 24-hour excavator operation, greatly improving efficiency and addressing safety challenges in scenarios like underground mines,” he said.
In these projects, manual “annotation-based” guidance for machines to learn tasks places greater demands on data annotators. “Most of them need to have industry experience and many are certified excavator operators,” Ye said.
Beyond data annotators, new digital professions like face designers, motion capture artists, and virtual architects are also emerging. Instead of working at a company or platform, an increasing number of people are choosing to be self-employed.
College student Zhou Run is embarking on such a journey. He accepts orders on lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu to create virtual avatars that closely resemble real-life images.
For a fee of CNY50, clients can commission his work. However, to buy the rights to their avatar or obtain the numerical data of their avatar’s features, they need to pay around CNY600.
“Today more gamers prefer the ability to freely change their appearance and customise their characters to achieve a more realistic experience in the virtual world. The pre-designed faces in games no longer satisfy players’ needs for personalization, leading to the emergence of the ‘face sculptor’ profession, which is what I’m doing.”
Zhou has been in the business for just under six months and has already amassed several hundred followers on his Xiaohongshu account. During peak periods, he can earn CNY4,000 to 5,000 a month.
As his order volume increases, he has transitioned from traditional modelling tools and face sculpting software to AI tools that allow for mass production.
Voice animation
VoiceAnimator is an AI-driven facial animation tool from NetEase Games AI Lab. This tool is capable of generating facial animations for virtual characters directly from inputted audio or text and audio files, that is suitable for hyper-realistic and anime-style virtual characters.
Such facial animations, which originally took 10 to 14 days to produce, can now be generated by AI in just two minutes. Based on the generated animations, artists can make further refinements.
“Creating vivid facial animations is indeed a complex, time-consuming, and costly endeavour. It requires understanding subtle facial muscle movements and variations, as well as smooth lip synchronisation with speech. With the increasing prevalence of virtual characters, there’s a growing demand for efficient content production. We aim to facilitate this process,” said Yin Xu, the technical manager of VoiceAnimator.
“As the AI industry flourishes, continuous learning is essential for those within the industry. Professional artists are also embracing AI knowledge. VoiceAnimator users not only need professional artistic skills but also need to learn AI-related tools to reduce repetitive tasks and unleash their creativity,” Yin added.
In the approximately four years since its development, this tool has been continuously optimised for various usage scenarios, from in-game character animations to educational virtual language tutors and AI-driven news broadcasting.
At home in the metaverse
According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of AI companies in China has surpassed 4,500. It has spawned new industries and business models while creating countless job opportunities, including new roles for those in traditional sectors. Professionals who can adeptly combine AI technology with traditional industry knowledge are becoming highly sought after in the market.
Bella Zheng, a former landscape designer, is transitioning to become a “city architect “in the metaverse and immersing herself in learning coding.
“I want to create cities in the virtual world,” Zheng said. “Those who can do urban planning often can’t do metaverse, and vice versa. The new profession of metaverse city architect combines both skill sets.”
Many architects and space designers are joining the construction of the metaverse, freeing themselves from traditional constraints to creatively express unique works, according to Zheng. Renowned projects in the metaverse like Zaha Hadid Architects’ “Liberland” are bringing this new architectural horizon into view.
This profession aligns with the childhood dream of Zheng, who is currently based in Los Angeles, California, of travelling the world. “I used to do part-time projects, visiting different cities for inspiration, including domestic and international cities, understanding their iconic features and feeling the atmosphere, and we would integrate that into our projects.”
What attracts her most to this job is the infinite creative space. “In the metaverse, rules or restrictions like gravity, structural stability, climate, or physical laws don’t apply. Architects can freely transcend existing conditions to create special environments and real artistic works,” she said.
“Years ago, parents might not have understood my profession and would have preferred that I become an urban designer, like most of my classmates did. But now their mindset has changed. This is an emerging career, which more and more people deem promising,” she said, adding there is an increasing recognition and acceptance, even from older people.
