tech
April 1, 2026
The gig workers who are training humanoid robots at home
People in Nigeria and India are strapping iPhones onto their heads and recording themselves doing chores.
TL;DR
- Contract workers in over 50 countries are recording themselves performing household chores to train humanoid robots.
- Companies like Micro1 hire workers to capture movement data, which is crucial for developing robots that can interact with the physical world.
- The job pays well by local standards, offering income in regions with high unemployment, but some workers find it monotonous.
- Privacy concerns are significant, as videos capture intimate details of workers' homes and routines, despite efforts to anonymize data.
- There are uncertainties about how the collected data is stored, shared with third parties, and whether it can be deleted upon request.
- The reliability and quality of the data are questioned, as workers may inadvertently teach robots unsafe habits.
- The development of humanoid robots relies heavily on vast amounts of real-world data, similar to how large language models are trained on text.
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