The BaseVideo60 Minutes (CBS News)13 min481,587 views

Humans are teaching AI how to do their jobs | 60 Minutes

In a 13-minute 60 Minutes segment, Jon Wertheim asks whether AI will take jobs or change them. CBS profiles Mercor, which pays experts to train AI models, and a law firm's AI partner personas. Mercor's CEO and a lawyer expect work to evolve; Clara Shih and economist Daron Acemoglu warn of large job losses.

Open the source ↗

Why it matters

The same thing, for different readers.

What it means for you

CBS reports AI-training gigs pay $20 to $200 an hour but often bring erratic hours, and that entry-level office tasks are where AI is already doing well.

For lawmakers

Acemoglu proposes designing AI that makes humans better rather than expendable and a tax code that rewards hiring people, and says the window to act is closing.

For researchers

The segment cites unnamed 'mounting research' on slower hiring and lower wages in AI-exposed jobs; Acemoglu directly contradicts Foody's claim that top economists expect more jobs in ten years.

The question it raises

Shih ties job loss to self-worth and community, while a lawyer and a music producer argue some work rests on human presence and lived experience that AI lacks.

In their own words

Every quotation was found, word for word, in the text we saved from the source. That shows the words are there; it does not make them true, or prove the speaker meant them as quoted.

From the captions uploaded with the video.

“I think a significant portion of things. Everything that humans want AI to be able to do — we wanna teach it how to do that.”
Brendan Foody, CEO, MercorMercor's CEO, asked whether the goal is for AI to do anything humans can do.
Found word for word in the source
“Well, I think that you're changing human work. It might not necessarily be that repetitive task that people have done in the past, but there's still so many other things that people could be able to do. And so I think that evolution is natural.”
Brendan Foody, CEO, MercorAnswering whether training AI to do what people spent careers perfecting endangers human work.
Found word for word in the source
“There are a lot of people whose jobs it is today within companies to prepare information, research, analyze data for other individuals in that company. And increasingly, although it's starting with the entry level, it could result in a lot of people losing their jobs.”
Clara Shih, Until January, oversaw major AI divisions at Salesforce and then Meta; founded a nonprofit for young workersShih, who left AI leadership roles to found a nonprofit for young workers, on which jobs AI affects first.
Found word for word in the source
“Because the number of people they're employing in these positions is small relative to the number of people who will be replaced. I mean, that's the whole point of automation.”
Daron Acemoglu, Nobel Prize-winning professor, MITAcemoglu answers why AI-training work will not absorb the people AI displaces.
Found word for word in the source
“It should. And it should move us into thinking about what we can do because there is a lot we can do. Because the future is so uncertain, because the future is so much subject to our choice and agency, it is all the more important that we have this discussion.”
Daron Acemoglu, Nobel Prize-winning professor, MITClosing answer, after Wertheim asks whether fears for the stability of society should scare us.
Found word for word in the source

The record

Questions
What happens to work, income and the economy? · How fast is AI advancing, and where is it heading?
People
Jon Wertheim (Speaks, Correspondent, 60 Minutes) · Brendan Foody (Speaks, CEO, Mercor) · Clara Shih (Speaks, Until January, oversaw major AI divisions at Salesforce and then Meta; founded a nonprofit for young workers) · Daron Acemoglu (Speaks, Nobel Prize-winning professor, MIT) · Kim Herlihy (Speaks, Trial lawyer and partner, Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease) · Robbie Hiser (Speaks, Music producer) · Melania Poonacha (Speaks, Physician) · Shawna Miller (Speaks, Winemaker) · Sam Altman (Speaks, OpenAI)
Also covered by
60 Minutes · 60 Minutes · 60 Minutes · 60 Minutes · 60 Minutes · 60 Minutes · 60 Minutes · 60 Minutes · 60 Minutes · 60 Minutes
What we read
We read the whole source.
Found by
The Radar, run of October 12, 2026, via yt-60-minutes (tier 1: the source’s own channel or an official record)
Cite this
60 Minutes (CBS News), “Humans are teaching AI how to do their jobs | 60 Minutes”, October 5, 2026. Entry in the Ctrl AI Base, https://ctrlai.com/base/cbs-60-minutes-2026-10-05-humans-teaching-ai-jobs
Our notesText is CBS News' own published transcript of this segment (cbsnews.com, updated Oct 4, 2026), not YouTube captions; the YouTube upload is dated Oct 5 in UTC, the broadcast aired Oct 4. The transcript covers only this 13-minute segment. The 'also' items (full 43-minute broadcast and nine Shorts) were not read; their titles suggest clips of the same segment but that was not checked, and the full broadcast also carries two unrelated stories. Figures in the segment are CBS's or the speakers' own and are not checked here: AI cited as the No. 1 reason for layoffs this year, nearly three-fourths of Americans fear AI will take jobs, trainer pay of $20 to $200 an hour, AI training as the fourth-fastest-growing LinkedIn job category, Acemoglu's view that unemployment could triple in a decade, and Foody's claim that the top 20 economists expect more jobs in 10 years. The segment opens with an AI-generated version of Wertheim, which it says is AI. The transcript spells Acemoglu's name 'DARRON' once. The change kind 'evidence' rests on CBS's interviews with over a dozen Mercor trainers; an editor may prefer 'argument'. A separate CBS web story, 'AI is being taught how to do your job', was seen in search results but not read. No instructions to an AI were found in the fetched text.