Scale AI is facing a third lawsuit over alleged labor practices. It's just over a month.This time it was claimed by workers that they suffered emotional harm from reviewing offensive material without adequate safeguards.
extent It is valued at $13.8 billion. Last year, There is a reliance on workers classified as contractors to perform tasks such as rating AI model responses.
Earlier this monthA former employee has filed a lawsuit alleging he was effectively paid below minimum wage and misclassified as a contractor. Similar issues were also reported. December 2024.
This Final complaintThe complaint, filed Jan. 17 in the Northern District of California, focuses on emotional harm from six employees of Scale's platform Outlier.
The lawsuit alleges that he was forced to write disturbing facts about violence and abuse when he sought mental health counseling without proper psychological support. They say they were misinformed about the nature of the work during their employment and ended up with mental health issues such as PTSD as a result of their work. They are new safety standards; Seeks creation of medical monitoring program with unspecified damages and attorney fees.
One of the plaintiffs, Steve McKinney, is the primary defendant in that separate lawsuit. December 2024 complaint Against the scale. The Clarkson Law Firm of Malibu, California represents the defendants in both complaints.
The Clarkson Law Firm has filed a class action lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly using the stolen data. Issued. After the district judge criticized it for its length and content. Citing the incident, Scale AI spokesman Joe Osborne criticized the Clarkson Law Firm, saying Scale plans to “vigorously defend itself.”
“The Clarkson Law Firm has previously — and unsuccessfully — gone after innovative technology companies with legal claims that were summarily dismissed in court. One of their previous complaints was that it was 'unnecessarily long' and 'grossly irrelevant; A federal court judge found that it contained 'intrusive or unnecessary information,'” Osborne told TechCrunch.
Scale by Osborne complies with all laws and regulations and the ability to exclude its contributors at any time; Osborne said there are “many safeguards” in place to protect contributors, such as advanced notice of sensitive content and access to health and wellness programs. Osborne said Scale does not take on projects that may contain child sexual abuse content.
In response, Glenn Danas, a partner at the Clarkson Law Firm, told TechCrunch that Scale AI failed to ensure a safe workplace by forcing workers to view gruesome and violent content to train these AI models.
“We must hold large tech companies like Scale AI accountable or continue to exploit workers to train unregulated technology for profit,” Danas said.