The smartest people in the world are automating themselves into obsolescence—and loving it

It was about 1:30 on a September morning when Lazaros-Antonios Chatzilazarou received a LinkedIn message. He was up late playing video games, an indulgence that he allows himself as he works toward a PhD in game theory while juggling a job at the Big Four accounting firm EY and a teaching post at the London School of Economics. Hitting pause on the game, Chatzilazarou opened LinkedIn and read the message. It was from a recruiter working for Mercor, an AI training company founded three years ago and based in San Francisco. Mercor was looking for game-theory experts, the message said. Was he interested? Chatzilazarou figured it was worth scoping out. So he replied yes, closed the game, and took Mercor’s online skills assessment a few days later. A week after, he was training AI systems from the major labs that Mercor works with, a side hustle that has him developing prompts to test how AI models apply game theory, then grading their responses. No single week is the same, but he says that the amount of work from Mercor can be the equivalent of a full-time job—and while he’s coy about how much exactly he earns, Chatzilazarou says it’s “a very competitive salary, and I’m very happy abo…