Indian gig workers film their hands to train robots

Clients now want multi-camera headsets capturing more of the body and scene, which costs more per hour than single-camera footage.

Indian gig workers such as barber Mohammed Ashim and garment worker Mohammed Arman are being paid to wear head-mounted cameras that record only their hands and work while faces are blurred, and the footage is sold to AI and robotics firms to train physical AI systems that control robots. Rashdan Technologies pays $5 to $10 for eight to 10 hours of recorded work, and clients are now asking for multi-camera headsets that capture more of the body and scene, which costs more per hour. Humyn Labs, which says it has 96,000 collectors across Latin America and Southeast Asia, argues that robots need real-world physical data because no existing internet archive captures embodied human activity such as how much force to apply when gripping an object. A Tata Institute of Social Sciences professor says it is too early to know whether the work will eventually automate jobs, and he is calling for governments to regulate AI.