An academic background

Roman is a US-based QA currently working on his PhD in Biophysics. His work experience mostly lies in teaching private physics and math lessons to high school and university students. 

Mindrift Team: What inspired you to try freelancing in the AI industry?

Roman: My knowledge of LLMs and the AI training process was quite general, which made working with Mindrift a great way to get hands-on experience in a new field of work. The freelance nature of the role also allowed me the flexibility to manage my own schedule and workload.

Mindrift Team: How did you discover Mindrift? 

Roman: I discovered Mindrift through a friend who was already working there and decided to give it a try myself. After joining, I found the team to be incredibly smart, driven, and committed to both performance and improvement.

Mindrift Team: Were there any surprising or challenging aspects of jumping into AI training?

Roman: If I had to pick one unexpected aspect of working with AI, it would be the sheer amount of data, effort, and people involved in such projects. While there are vast amounts of information already available online, these projects require reliable data, proper quality control, and experts to ensure accuracy.

The ins and outs of the QA role

We chatted with Roman about the differences between AI Tutor and QA roles to get his take on his experiences. 

Mindrift Team: Can you explain what an AI Tutor does to someone who’s a beginner?

Roman: An AI tutor is responsible for creating question-answer pairs, dialogues, tasks, solutions, and other text-based prompts that will later be used to train an AI model. Imagine explaining a scientific topic to a friend or student, solving a math problem, or writing a brief article about a medical case or historical event. These are the kinds of tasks you can expect as an AI tutor. If you enjoy writing about topics in your area of expertise, AI tutoring might be a great fit for you.

Mindrift Team: How does it compare to the QA role? 

Roman: The QA, or quality assessment, is another crucial step in this process and it often happens alongside AI tutoring. Here the role is reversed: the AI model generates a prompt, dialogue, or solution in your field of knowledge, and your task is to evaluate it for mistakes, inconsistencies, or other issues. These iterative quality control steps are essential for improving AI performance.

In some cases, QA also involves reviewing the work of other tutors. If you have strong expertise, experience, and general knowledge in your field, you can help new tutors by ensuring their prompts meet quality standards and providing feedback to improve their work.

Mindrift Team: Can you talk about your experience in these roles at Mindrift? 

Roman: I’m really grateful for the opportunity to have worked with Mindrift for almost a year now. While working as an AI tutor, I have also been a team leader for a physics project, where I provided guidance and ensured quality and consistency in the output of expert teams specializing in physics and mathematics.

Working in a team of more than 40 members was an incredible experience, giving me valuable skills in project coordination on a scale I had never experienced before. It helped me better understand and adapt to the objectives and goals of someone responsible for overseeing an entire project as well as its individual components.

Advice from our expert

If you’re interested in training AI models or ensuring quality as a QA, Roman’s advice is simple: give it a try! 🙂 

Mindrift Team: Great advice! Can you expand on that?

Roman: If you're interested in AI training, there's no better way to experience it firsthand and get a sense of what to expect. If you enjoy discussing, writing about, or explaining topics connected to your area of expertise, this can be a great opportunity—not only to explore something new, but also to get paid for it.

It’s even better if you have experience writing or editing various types of texts, as well as teaching or tutoring skills. Additionally, if you're a graduate or a current student, this role can be a valuable way to apply your knowledge as well as to refine it. From my experience, one of the best ways to deepen your understanding of a subject is to explain it to others—AI training offers just that.

If this sounds like you, and you have professional experience in any domain, come join us at Mindrift! Mindrift is a platform that curates a talent pool of experts and connects them with cutting-edge AI projects from the world’s leading companies. 

Work on interesting AI projects on your own time, add new experiences to your resume, and get paid for your contribution. Check out our open roles and talent pools to get started.