Indian workers are paid to film activities used to train physical AI

Workers are being paid to film activities such as cutting hair, doing household tasks and working in factories. The BBC reports that companies such as Rashdan Technologies collect and sell the videos to technology companies and research organizations developing physical AI, which can control robots in the real world. Rashdan pays $5 to $10 for eight to 10 hours of recorded work, according to its co-founder and CEO, Shahil Baig.

Baig says the company removes faces and personal information, but says clients have begun asking for four to six cameras mounted around a person’s head to capture the entire scene. Humyn Labs, which also collects and processes this type of data, says it has 96,000 data collectors in countries across Latin America and Southeast Asia. Its founder, Manish Agarwal, says real-world video is needed to capture physical movements and forces that simulations do not reproduce.