A 34-year-old Indian professional living in the United Kingdom has revealed a remarkably lucrative side hustle: he earns $200, approximately ₹18,000, per hour by training artificial intelligence models. Despite an already overflowing schedule, Utkarsh Amitabh's intellectual curiosity led him to seize this unexpected opportunity.
From Microsoft to AI Tutor: A Packed Schedule Gets Fuller
According to a CNBC Make It interview, Amitabh was not actively job-hunting in January 2025 when the data-labelling startup micro1 approached him. At that moment, his plate was more than full. He was writing books, teaching at a university level, running the global mentorship platform Network Capital as its founder and CEO, and pursuing a PhD at the prestigious University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. On top of these professional commitments, he was adapting to life with a newborn baby at home.
However, the offer aligned perfectly with his unique skill set. Utkarsh Amitabh holds an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and a master's in moral philosophy. He also brings over six years of experience from Microsoft, where he worked on cloud computing and AI partnerships. His background in business strategy, financial modelling, and technology made the role a natural fit. He saw it not as an extra burden, but as a way to advance his interests within a limited weekly time frame.
The Lucrative Flexibility of Expert AI Work
The flexibility of the freelance role was a major draw. Amitabh typically dedicates an average of 3.5 hours each night to this work, after his one-year-old daughter falls asleep. This disciplined approach has yielded significant financial returns. Since starting in January, his earnings, including bonuses, have neared the $300,000 mark.
He emphasises that financial gain was not his primary driver. For him, fair compensation is a core value, and he finds the pay "respectable" for work demanding high expertise. His prior work includes authoring a book on the side-hustle economy and academic research on how AI could transform human achievement, making this venture a seamless extension of his intellectual pursuits.
A Balanced View on AI and the Future of Jobs
Amitabh is acutely aware that his work in training AI intersects with broader global anxieties about machines displacing human jobs. He maintains a balanced, pragmatic perspective on this issue. Citing projections from the World Economic Forum, he highlights a dual reality: while AI may render some roles obsolete, it is also forecast to create millions of new jobs globally by 2030.
He believes the future lies in collaboration, not competition, between human expertise and machine intelligence. "It’s also possible that this AI fear collectively empowers us to learn better, upskill ourselves and frame questions differently about ourselves," Amitabh told CNBC. He concluded, "So I’m not concerned about the [idea of] AI Doom entirely, because I think it does far more good than bad." His story serves as a potent example of how specialised knowledge, when combined with AI, can create extraordinary opportunities in the evolving digital economy.
