Australia's Appen says being the Switzerland of AI boosts demand for its human testing

SYDNEY, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Australia's Appen, a big supplier of human assessment of artificial intelligence systems, said rising technology protectionism would boost demand ‌in the United States and China for its services that use ‌real people to train and test models.

The outlook offers a counterintuitive glimpse of AI‑era winners. While automation ​drives mass layoffs at some businesses such as WiseTech and Block, demand is rising for companies that supply the human input needed to develop and refine AI.

Tech protectionism, which has already prompted Washington to restrict Nvidia AI chip exports to China, ‌could give rise to trade ⁠barriers in data, model sourcing and verification, forcing companies to develop these locally, Appen's CEO said.

"There will be some protectionism going ⁠in place, which will create more demand for data, which kind of puts Appen in a good spot because we get to play on both sides," Chief Executive Ryan ​Kolln ​said in an interview.

"It helps ... that we're ​Australia. It's a little bit of ‌the Switzerland approach where we're not strongly aligned to the U.S. or China. The divisions are, but we aren't as a business," Kolln added, referring to the European country's neutral status.

Appen this week said underlying pre-tax profit for the year to December more than tripled due to a surge in contracts from China ‌and new generative AI projects for its global ​unit - which includes the U.S. The company said ​it expected sales to grow ​up to 30% in 2026.

Appen uses a vast global network of ‌casual workers to provide human verification ​of synthetic data, but ​Kolln said as AI products became advanced the qualifications for workers became more specific.

"We've been asked to find people who ... competed in Math Olympiad ​and won a gold ‌medal," he said. "They're easy to find because you can search it, but ​how do you get them to want to work for you?"

(Reporting ​by Byron Kaye; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)