Big Tech May Be Using Indian Factory Workers To Train AI

The

artificial intelligence boom is real. We all can agree on how AI is changing our work, lifestyle, education and healthcare and impacting our lives. But can it become a spy to monitor your work and train robots that can take your job? The question sounds alarming. What seemed like a strange viral video of Indian garment workers wearing white headgear might point to something concerning: the growing use of human labour data to feed AI and robots. As per Scroll, workers at a garment factory of Pearl Global Industries in Gurugram were told to wear a camera-linked device during their shift. This could reportedly help AI companies teach how humans move, stitch and interact in a factory.

Workers Say They Were Asked To Wear Camera Devices

Reportedly, workers told the publication that they were told to wear these devices that monitor productivity and study their patterns. Some of them even became uncomfortable after they used the device for days, raising concerns over heat from the batteries and the possibility of surveillance that could be involved. As per the publication, this hardware was related to a startup called Egolab.AI. This company has described itself as a large ‘first-person POV data aggregator’. It records the video clips from a worker’s point of view using lightweight wearable cameras. This is called ‘egocentric data’. Moreover, the report notes that these clips can be further processed into datasets for global AI and robotics organisations working on computer vision. Reportedly, the data can be given to firms like Figure AI, Tesla and Boston Dynamics.

Why AI Companies Want Human Movement Data

Experts have often suggested that AI systems and robots learn and train on a larger volume of datasets available to them from real-world human behaviour. For instance, robots designed for factories could learn how humans sew, pick objects, move their hands or coordinate with each other. Recording real-life work from a first-person view gives AI systems access to natural human actions. This is not something new. Bloomberg reported that Meta is also tracking the computers of its employees to see how they work. It is reportedly keeping an eye on their mouse clicks, typing style and even keystrokes to note how the workforce works and how their data could be fed to AI for training purposes.

Notably, the broader implications are hard to ignore. Across organisations and factories, AI firms are increasing their search for data, which is considered gold in today’s AI-driven era. In such a condition, the workforce can itself train AI that could potentially take away their jobs.