OpenAI is asking third-party contractors to upload real assignments and tasks from their current or previous workplaces so that it can use the data to evaluate the performance of its next-generation AI models, according to records from OpenAI and the training data company Handshake AI obtained by WIRED.

The project appears to be part of OpenAI’s efforts to establish a human baseline for different tasks that can then be compared with AI models. In September, the company launched a new evaluation process to measure the performance of its AI models against human professionals across a variety of industries. OpenAI says this is a key indicator of its progress towards achieving AGI, or an AI system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable tasks.

“We’ve hired folks across occupations to help collect real-world tasks modeled off those you’ve done in your full-time jobs, so we can measure how well AI models perform on those tasks,” reads one confidential document from OpenAI. “Take existing pieces of long-term or complex work (hours or days+) that you’ve done in your occupation and turn each into a task.”

OpenAI is asking contractors to describe tasks they’ve done in their current job or in the past and to upload real examples of work they did, according to an OpenAI presentation about the project viewed by WIRED. Each of the examples should be “a concrete output (not a summary of the file, but the actual file), e.g., Word doc, PDF, Powerpoint, Excel, image, repo,” the presentation notes. OpenAI says people can also share fabricated work examples created to demonstrate how they would realistically respond in specific scenarios.

OpenAI and Handshake AI declined to comment.

Real-world tasks have two components, according to the OpenAI presentation. There’s the task request (what a person’s manager or colleague told them to do) and the task deliverable (the actual work they produced in response to that request). The company emphasizes multiple times in instructions that the examples contractors share should reflect “real, on-the-job work” that the person has “actually done.”

One example in the OpenAI presentation outlines a task from a “Senior Lifestyle Manager at a luxury concierge company for ultra-high-net-worth individuals.” The goal is to “Prepare a short, 2-page PDF draft of a 7-day yacht trip overview to the Bahamas for a family who will be traveling there for the first time.” It includes additional details regarding the family’s interests and what the itinerary should look like. The “experienced human deliverable” then shows what the contractor in this case would upload: a real Bahamas itinerary created for a client.

OpenAI instructs the contractors to delete corporate intellectual property and personally identifiable information from the work files they upload. Under a section labeled “Important reminders,” OpenAI tells the workers to “Remove or anonymize any: personal information, proprietary or confidential data, material nonpublic information (e.g., internal strategy, unreleased product details).”

One of the files viewed by WIRED document mentions an ChatGPT tool called “Superstar Scrubbing” that provides advice on how to delete confidential information.

Evan Brown, an intellectual property lawyer with Neal & McDevitt, tells WIRED that AI labs that receive confidential information from contractors at this scale could be subject to trade secret misappropriation claims. Contractors who offer documents from their previous workplaces to an AI company, even scrubbed, could be at risk of violating their previous employers’ non-disclosure agreements, or exposing trade secrets.

“The AI lab is putting a lot of trust in its contractors to decide what is and isn’t confidential,” says Brown. “If they do let something slip through, are the AI labs really taking the time to determine what is and isn’t a trade secret? It seems to me that the AI lab is putting itself at great risk.”

While iOS users have an easy smartwatch choice in the Apple Watch, Android owners have a few more options, as well as face shapes, to choose from. The semi-squircular Samsung Galaxy Watch8 and Watch 8 Classic have both a unique look and set of health features, and are currently marked down to as low as $280 at Amazon for the 30mm Bluetooth version, or as low as $433 for the Watch8 Classic.

As the first watches to sport Google’s Wear OS 6, these made waves when they released with bigger, bolder watch faces, and an improved interface that shows more information. It has a 1.5-inch AMOLED screen that’s generously sized even on the 40mm version we tested, and has more than enough brightness to check on a sunny day.

Both watches feature the kind of physical activity and health tracking data you’d expect from a modern smartwatch, including steps, heart rate, and both sleep quality and bedtime guidance, which recommends when you should go to bed, if you couldn’t sort that out on your own. You can also use the optical sensor to measure your Antioxidant Index to help track what you’re eating without manually logging meals.

Battery life is a key factor for any smartwatch, and the smaller 40mm didn’t quite impress us, running for just right around 20 hours, about half of Samsung’s claimed runtime. The more expensive Watch8 Classic lasted closer to two full days, even some tracked physical activities tossed in. If more than full day of battery is a key selling point, I’d consider making the upgrade.

While only the graphite and silver models are in stock as I write this, there are discounts for both the 40mm and 44mm sizes across both the Bluetooth only and LTE connected options. You can also scoop a healthy markdown on the more deluxe Watch8 Classic, which I spotted for $433 in black or $450 in white. If you’re curious to learn more, make sure to check out our full review of both the Watch8 and Watch8 Classic for all the details, or peruse our other favorite smartwatches to find your new daily driver.

Did California lose Larry Page? The Google and Alphabet cofounder, who left day-to-day operations in 2019, has seen his net worth soar in the years since—from around $50 billion at the time of his departure to somewhere approximating $260 billion today. (Leaving his job clearly didn’t hurt his wallet.) Last year, a proposed ballot initiative in California threatened billionaires like Page with a one-time 5 percent wealth tax—prompting some of them to consider leaving the state before the end of the year, when the tax, if passed, would retroactively kick in. Page seems to have been one of those defectors; The Wall Street Journal reported that he recently spent more than $170 million on two homes in Miami. The article also indicated his cofounder Sergey Brin also might become a Florida man.

The Google guys, formerly California icons, are only two of approximately 250 billionaires subject to the plan. It’s not certain whether many of them have departed for Florida, Texas, New Zealand, or a space station. But it is clear that a lot of vocal billionaires and other super rich people are publicly losing their minds about the proposal, which will appear on the November ballot if it garners around 875,000 signatures. Hedge fund magnate Bill Ackman calls it “catastrophic.” Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, boasted that he already pays plenty of taxes, so much so that one year he claims his tax return broke the IRS computer.

Still, when considered as a percentage of income, even the big sums paid by some billionaires are way lower than the tax rates many teachers, accountants, and plumbers pay every year. If Musk, currently worth an estimated $716 billion, had to pay a 5 percent wealth tax, he’d probably manage to scrape by with a $680 billion nest egg—enough to buy Ford, General Motors, Toyota, and Mercedes, and still remain the world’s richest person. (In any case, he’s safe from California taxes; a few years ago he moved to Texas.)

California’s politicians, including Governor Gavin Newsom, are generally opposed to the initiative. A glaring exception is Representative Ro Khanna, who said to WIRED in a statement that he’s on board with “a modest wealth tax on billionaires to deal with staggering inequality and to make sure people have healthcare.”

Khanna might pay a price for taking on the wealthy and may face a primary challenge backed by oligarch bucks because of it. A safer position for Bay Area politicians is the one taken by San Jose mayor Matt Mahan. He recently posted a tweet stream opposing the bill, saying that if California passed the wealth tax it would be cutting off its nose to spite its face. When I speak to Mahan, he emphasizes the risk of California standing alone in taxing the net worth of billionaires. “It puts at risk our innovation economy that is the real engine of economic growth and opportunity,” he says. (Mahan isn’t super rich, but he is billionaire-adjacent: He once was CEO of a company cofounded by former Facebook president Sean Parker.)

Because of the mobility of rich people, California does have real worries about the impact of a state wealth tax. Not being a billionaire myself, I find the idea baffling—moving away from one’s ideal home simply to avoid a tax that makes no impact on your living situation seems, to use Mahan’s words, like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Also, I don’t see why an exodus of billionaires necessarily means the end of Silicon Valley as the heart of tech innovation. If you want to become a billionaire, there’s no place better than the Bay Area, with an ecosystem that nurtures innovative businesses. That’s not changing. A few years ago, some tech people moved to Miami, claiming it was going to become the new Silicon Valley. That didn’t happen.