That's just exploitative business.

I know companies that operate in that space and they pay incredibly well, between $20 to $50/hour.

> GPT APIs which perform just as well

That's because they were also trained by exploiting third world groups, paying about $2/hour.

The problem here isn't offering work to developing countries, the problem here is major corporations squeezing them for every cent and not allowing it to be used as a means of getting out of poverty. And that's also why the workers end up performing half-assed work by using automated classifiers and faking their credentials. It's not hard to see where this goes for both.