Indian Workers Film Daily Tasks for $2.6 an Hour to Train AI Robots
Updated
Updated · Al Jazeera English · Jun 11
Indian Workers Film Daily Tasks for $2.6 an Hour to Train AI Robots
3 articles · Updated · Al Jazeera English · Jun 11
Summary
Thousands of Indian workers are recording first-person videos of chores and manual jobs, supplying “egocentric data” that global tech companies use to train AI-powered robots.
At 250 rupees ($2.6) an hour, workers strap smartphones or cameras to their heads while slicing fruit, making garlands or doing factory tasks so AI models can learn human movement in real-world settings.
The work reflects a broader push to build robots that can navigate homes and workplaces, a harder challenge than training chatbots or image generators on existing digital data.
India has emerged as a major hub for collecting, processing and annotating AI data, and experts expect demand for these services to grow as the humanoid robot market expands.
That growth also sharpens labor concerns in a country with 490 million informal workers, with officials and workers warning automation could eventually threaten the same livelihoods now helping train it.