Nagireddy Sriramyachandra, a 25-year-old Indian housewife from Chennai, straps a smartphone to her head and films herself slicing mangoes to train artificial intelligence-powered robots for future household tasks.
Earning 250 rupees ($2.6) per hour of video, she considers her mundane recordings invaluable for global tech companies teaching machines to move like humans in the real world.
"Who else will give you 250 rupees an hour just for doing housework?" Sriramyachandra asks from her kitchen. She adds that she might get a robot herself in the future.
AI chatbots and image generators crunch vast digital data, but building systems to navigate real-life environments is more challenging. Developers believe feeding first-person footage, known as egocentric data, into specialized AI models will help robots copy human behavior.
Some AI trainers work at home, others in factories or studios using video glasses, head-mounted cameras, and motion sensors. Sriramyachandra sends recordings via a special app to an AI data company with offices in India and the US, listing Fortune 500 multinationals among its clients.
The humanoid robot market is booming, with projections of over one billion robots in use by 2050, mostly for industrial and commercial purposes. India has positioned itself as a global middleman for AI data creation, processing, and annotation.
Digital labor expert Aditi Surie from the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bengaluru notes that data collection services are likely to increase. However, alongside the technology's benefits, automation poses risks.
Government think tank NITI Aayog said most AI and labor discussions "focus on white-collar professionals and predict an almost certain loss of jobs in the segment" without urgent action. It highlighted that little attention is paid to how AI can serve India's 490 million informal workers, the backbone of the economy.
Ponni, 55, who has sat by the roadside in Bengaluru making flower garlands for a decade, also had a phone strapped to her forehead for pay. She says the next generation doing similar work will face problems.
Source: www.aljazeera.com