- Indian workers train AI robots with head-mounted smartphone footage.
- They film everyday human actions for developing advanced AI.
- This data collection raises concerns about future job displacement.
For years, everyone heard, “AI will take your job”, and while it seemed bogus at first, the thing now seems to be coming to life. Ironically, the people helping build that future are the ones most at risk from it. Across India, thousands of ordinary workers, housewives, street vendors, and daily wage earners are being paid to train the very robots that could one day replace them.
Armed with smartphones strapped to their heads, they are capturing real-world human movements to feed into AI systems, earning a few hundred rupees an hour for work that could reshape the global labour market forever.
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The task sounds simple, but the science behind it is not. AI chatbots and image generators rely on digital data, but training robots to navigate real-life environments is a far more complex challenge. According to a report by Al Jazeera, developers are betting on first-person footage, known as egocentric data, to help AI models replicate human behaviour.
In Chennai, 25-year-old housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra straps a smartphone to her head and films herself slicing mangoes, earning 250 rupees ($2.6) per hour. She sends recordings through a dedicated app to an AI data company with offices in India and the United States, which counts Fortune 500 multinationals among its clients.
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“Who else will give you 250 rupees an hour just for doing housework?” she said from her kitchen. “I may get a robot myself in the future,” she added.
Projections suggest more than one billion humanoid robots could be in use globally by 2050, largely for industrial and commercial purposes. India has positioned itself as a key player in the creation, processing, and annotation of AI data.
“It’s likely that these data collection services will increase,” said Aditi Surie, a digital labour expert from the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bengaluru.
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Not everyone is optimistic. Government think tank NITI Aayog has flagged concerns, noting that most conversations around AI and jobs “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, the very people who form the backbone of our economy,” it said in a report released ahead of a global AI summit in India this year.
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That concern is felt on the ground, too. Ponni, a 55-year-old flower garland maker who has spent the last decade working roadside in Bengaluru, has also been paid to wear a phone on her forehead for AI data collection.
“The next generation, who might have to do work similar to mine, will face a problem,” she said.
