I'm guessing a very small subset of trainers make that much. An awful lot of AI training is done via Mechanical Turk like systems that pay pennies per task. They may work out to more than $15/hour on a per task basis but rarely can anyone get a continuous flow of hundreds of tasks per hour, so grossing even $10/hour would be considered pretty exceptional.

Edit to add reference [1]: "An analysis of the platform published in 2018 revealed that of the 3.8 million tasks analyzed, which were performed by 2676 workers, such workers earned a median hourly wage of about $2 an hour, while only 4 percent of workers earned more than $7.25 an hour"

[1] https://www.ecomcrew.com/amazon-mechanical-turk

In Kansas City (whose cost of living is about 15% lower than the US median, and the home of the first person in the article) a 1br apartment would cost about half of the $15 an hour wages (pre-tax).

I said it in another comment - inflation (and inflated corporate profits) has hit reality in the US like a truck. We need to adjust our mental models to match the new reality.

$15 was a living wage here in the upper Midwest a few years ago. Now I doubt it is. Most fast food restaurants pay about that much plus benefits. They used to pay closer to $10

That was my thought too. The previous wave of articles on this said part of their contractors were paid $2/hour: https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/

But no benefits :(

It's below minimum wage in California.

Australian McDonald’s money