Data Annotation Jobs

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are transforming industries worldwide with the help of high-quality annotated data. These technological companies are forced to provide job opportunities to people who are conversant with technology so that they can get high quality annotated data to train their machines. 

Having worked for some of these data annotated companies for seven months, i will take you through the article on types of data annotation jobs, reasons why these companies hire people, how to get these jobs and challenges you can experience. 

What is Data Annotation?

Data annotation is the process of labeling and tagging data such as text, images, audio and video to help train AI models.

Annotated data is extracted from individual inorder to help these machines to recognize patterns and make accurate predictions. Through this, people get data annotation jobs.

Types of Data Annotation Jobs

These technological industries offer different types of jobs based on their specialization on AI models. 

Image Annotation. This type of a job requires you to label objects in pictures. Example, a picture with a car and dustbin, you will be required to label a car and dustbin in the photo and state their names. 

Text Annotation. This type of annotation involves categorizing text, sentiment analysis and named entity recognition. 

Audio Annotation. This involves Transcribing speeches, audio and research recordings. Also tagging sound effect may apply. 

Video Annotation. This involves tracking objects and labelling human actions for surveillance systems and autonomous vehicles to detect. 

3D Point Cloud Annotation. Labeling objects in LiDAR data for autonomous vehicles. Example, Training machines to detect objects along the road. 

Why Companies Hire Data Annotators

To Train AI Models. AI needs labelled data for them to learn and improve in executing their tasks. 

To Improve User Experience. Changes occur each and every time creating need for the companies to keep employing data annotaters to train their AI models so that they can achieve great results.

To Automate Tasks. In this era of AI, jobs done by many labourers for a company are replaced by machines. Annotated data helps machines to automate tasks that are simple and do not require knowledge. 

To Develop Industry-Specific AI Solutions. Some companies may require high-quality annotated datasets. For example, Tesla may require autonomous driving annotated data, surveillance system companies may require object and human actions monitoring datasets. 

Who Can Work in Data Annotation?

For you as data annotator, you must have the following things:

Basic computer skills. Anyone who knows how to use a computer or laptop and some simple online tools required to perform the task. 

Good attention to detail. You must be able to provide high-quality annotated data that is accurate and has none or minimum errors. You must be careful and accurate.

Language skills. For a person doing text or audio annotation jobs, understanding the language used for the task, grammar and punctuation is necessary. 

How to Get a Data Annotation Job

You can be able to get data annotation jobs by signing up on various data annotation platforms, learning data annotation skills and tools that will be able to help you secure a job from these industries and joining freelance platforms to sell your skills. Therefore, you can get these data annotation jobs by doing the following:

Sign Up on Data Annotation Platforms

Many AI related companies offer remote data labelling jobs which you can get through signing on their websites. 

Some of the best platforms are as follows:

Clickworker, Toloka, Remotasks, Microworkers, Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), Scale AI and Appen. 

Freelance Platforms

These freelancing platforms allows you to find clients who offer these services. Most of their annotation projects are longterm. 

Some of these freelancing platforms are Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer. 

Join AI Companies and Research Labs

Popular companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla and OpenAI sometimes hire part time and full time data annotators for their AI projects. 

Learn Annotation Tools

Learning some of the annotation tools required by some AI companies to extract data may give you a chance of getting the job.

Some of Annotation tools are Labelbox, Computer Vision Annotation Tools (CVAT), VGG Image Annotator (VIA) and SuperAnnotate. 

How Much Can You Earn?

You can earn based on the level you are applying for these data annotation jobs. Some people require basic, advanced or freelance annotation jobs. 

Basic annotation jobs. This involves doing simple jobs like labelling and tagging images. These jobs can pay $5 to $15 per hour.

Advanced annotation jobs. Doing more complex annotation jobs like 3D data annotation, you can earn $20 to $50 per hour. 

Freelance and contract-based work. For these jobs, you can earn over $1000 if you work on a regular basis. 

Challenges in Data Annotation

High Competition. Many people are applying for these annotation jobs, so finding these jobs is not easy. 

Accuracy Requirements. Data annotation companies require high-quality annotated data so that they can achieve desired results. Input of data with mistakes or misleading data may lead to rejection. 

Repetitive Work. Doing the same work over and over again can be tiresome and boring.

Conclusion

Doing these data annotation jobs helps create job opportunities to everyone since even some of them work remotely. Working as a data annotater helps to train AI models so as to improve AI accuracy in executing their tasks. 

Having learnt all these, it confirms that you don’t need a degree to do these jobs, you only need basic computer skills and a popular language like English among others.  Read more about the technological jobs here!