With a smartphone strapped to her head, Nagireddy Sriramyachandra films herself slicing mangoes in her kitchen in Chennai, India, to train AI-powered robots for future household tasks. Earning just over two dollars for an hour of video, her mundane recordings are invaluable for global tech companies teaching machines human-like movements. The 25-year-old is part of a growing army of thousands of AI system trainers in the world's most populous country.
AI Trainers: A New Workforce
"Who else will give you 250 rupees an hour just for doing housework?" said Sriramyachandra. "I may get a robot myself in the future," she added. Artificial intelligence chatbots and image generators crunch digital data, but building systems to navigate real-life environments is more challenging. Developers believe feeding first-person footage, called "egocentric data," into specialized AI models will help robots copy humans.
Some AI trainers work at home, others in factories or specialized studios, using video glasses, head-mounted cameras, and motion sensors. "It blares 'hands not detected' when I'm not recording properly," said Sriramyachandra, who sends recordings via a special app to the AI data company Objectways. The firm, with offices in India and the United States, lists Fortune 500 multinationals as clients and works with Amazon SageMaker.
Booming Humanoid Robot Market
The humanoid robot market is booming, with Morgan Stanley predicting over a billion in use by 2050, mostly for industrial and commercial purposes. "Folding clothes, coffee making... cooking a very specific thing, sandwich making," Objectways head Ravi Shankar listed as client-requested videos. "Some jobs are supposed to be taken over, so humans can go and do better things."
In India, the emerging field of spatial AI is providing new employment. The 50-year-old CEO, US-based, hires workers from Tamil Nadu, where he grew up. At a Karur textile factory, AFP saw eight people wearing head cameras and smart glasses supplied by Objectways. India has positioned itself as a global middleman for AI data creation, processing, and annotation. "It's likely that these data collection services will increase," said digital labour expert Aditi Surie from the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bengaluru.
Informal Workers at Risk
India is aggressively developing its AI industry, but leaders are aware of automation risks. Government think-tank NITI Aayog said most discussions around AI and labour "focus on white-collar professionals and predict an almost certain loss of jobs in the segment" without urgent action. "Little attention, if any, is paid to how AI can serve India's 490 million informal workers," it said in a report ahead of a global AI summit. The think-tank examined how the technology could affect dozens of professions, from cobblers to farmers.
For the last decade, 55-year-old Ponni has sat on a roadside in Bengaluru making flower garlands. She, too, has been paid to have a phone strapped to her forehead. "The next generation... who might have to do work similar to mine -- they will face a problem," Ponni said.
Always Wearing a Camera
At an Objectways studio, AI system trainers film themselves performing household tasks in fake, fully furnished apartment rooms. After several thousand hours of filming, the wallpaper is changed for variety. "Today I sit here, tomorrow I stand there," said engineering graduate Rani N., 21, on a break from filming herself folding a towel. Each video lasts about four minutes, and she records around 90 a day on nearly every conceivable spot on the bed. She said the job is "tolerable" but feels like she's always wearing a camera.
In other rooms, colleagues arranged pencil sharpeners, water bottles, and crayons in patterns, recording with depth-sensor cameras. Qanat Consulting Services in Andhra Pradesh, an Objectways subcontractor, supplies about a dozen larger data firms with recordings. Some of its 2,000 contributors perform tasks with motion-sensor bands on their "wrists, hands and legs," CEO Thaslim Pattan said.
Manish Agarwal of Bengaluru-based Humyn Labs records conversations as well as videos. Contributors discuss assigned topics, from politics to entertainment, for clients wanting to process speech patterns. Agarwal denies that robots will steal jobs, believing that networks of humans and robots "will work together" one day. "A welder in India could be managing a welder-robot in Prague," he said.
