Industry analysis, annotation workflows, and the shift toward autonomous AI evaluation.
Most AI teams know annotation is expensive. Few know exactly where the money goes. These five patterns reveal when your evaluation pipeline has crossed from "necessary cost" into "money we're burning for no reason" — each one with a number attached.
The $4.9B data labeling market still runs on human annotators. Cost, quality variance, speed ceilings, and data privacy risk are forcing AI teams to look for a better way — and the alternatives are maturing fast.