--- title: Google Bought Data From a Failed Airline. Here's What That Means for the Labor Market | TIME canonical: https://time.com/video/eLPMPDTy/ og:title: Google Bought Data From a Failed Airline. Here's What That Means for the Labor Market og:url: https://time.com/video/eLPMPDTy/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/eLPMPDTy/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Google Bought Data From a Failed Airline. Here's What That Means for the Labor Market twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/eLPMPDTy/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * Business # Google Bought Data From a Failed Airline. Here's What That Means for the Labor Market > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Google Bought Data From a Failed Airline. Here's What That Means for the Labor Market [Watch (HLS stream): Google Bought Data From a Failed Airline. Here's What That Means for the Labor Market](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eLPMPDTy.m3u8) (1:56)  _Published 2026-09-02_ --- Sep 2, 2026 7:56 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Democrats Launched an Impeachment Inquiry Into President Trump. Here's What That Means](/video/MLzyDn3X/) ### Democrats Launched an Impeachment Inquiry Into President Trump. Here's What That Means [What a Bear Market Means](/video/d9xEMfDZ/) ### What a Bear Market Means [5 Ways Airlines are Finally Becoming Less Greedy & Mean](/video/B7KDbcsw/) ### 5 Ways Airlines are Finally Becoming Less Greedy & Mean --- ## Transcript What would Google want with a failed airline's data? Spirit Airlines collapsed in May, leaving behind a ton of data. We're talking millions of emails, Microsoft Teams messages, and lines of code. And now tech companies are trying to use data like that to train AI to do white collar jobs, maybe including yours. Spirit's data is so valuable that Google bid $10 million for it in August, beating bids from other AI data companies. AI companies have been in the news recently for destroying books in their voracious quest for more data to train their AI models. But teaching so-called AI agents to be capable office workers requires more than just book learning or guzzling up code from the internet. It requires data that's largely private, buried in corporate emails, internal workflows, and chats. Spirit's data, even though it's about a failed company, is probably more useful than you think. It probably contains all kinds of tacit information about how to navigate a corporate environment, execute projects, and use different kinds of software precisely the kind of information that AI can learn from and apply to lots of different industries, not just aviation. I asked a Google spokesperson why they were buying Spirit's data, and they declined to share specifics, but they said the data can be helpful in improving our products and AI models. So how does this work? One of the biggest trends in AI over the last 18 months or so has been the rise of so-called reinforcement learning environments. These are essentially fake versions of workplace software, where AI agents can learn from the job and make mistakes. But this fake software is only as good as the data that companies put inside it. You can ask an AI chatbot to fill it with fake data, but that's often not good enough. Many companies have been hiring human experts to enter the data manually, but that's expensive, and it's slow. The alternative is just buying the data from real life companies, especially failing ones. A category of deal that's taking off right now in the AI industry. I'm Billy Perrigo and this is AI explained by humans. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Google Bought Data From a Failed Airline. Here's What That Means for the Labor Market","description":"","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/eLPMPDTy/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-09-02T19:53:31.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eLPMPDTy.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/eLPMPDTy/","duration":"PT1M56S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/eLPMPDTy/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```