Picture this: a team of camera-clad cleaners and a private chef to boot, all wired with high-tech recording apparatus show up at your home. You are not part of a reality TV show, and have not woken up in an Aldous Huxley or Margaret Atwood novel. Instead, you are a resident of New York City, where AI companies are sending free cooking and cleaning staff straight to people’s doors. But there’s a catch: this AI company is gathering data to train the next generation of cooking and cleaning robots, and every inch of your apartment is now being recorded.
The initiative, dubbed Shift by AI firm Micro AGI, is part of a growing number of companies developing the next generation of autonomous robots, which tech bosses hope will be able to do everything from washing dishes to serving as live-in personal caregivers. At my apartment on New York’s Upper East Side, I was greeted by two mid-twenties college graduates who had bounced around the start-up world and were looking for work. Because demand for the free cleans is so high, they are stationed in New York indefinitely, cleaning around five apartments a day, five days a week.
The only difference between these guys and a regular cleaner is they have built-in cameras attached to their caps, connected via a lead to their mobile phones. You know, it’s not every day you have someone cleaning your home while also recording the entire process. The main aim of this offer is to perform tasks requiring dexterity, to train the robots of the future to use their hands. As a result, the cleaners were intensely focused on their hands while carrying out the job.
Bercan Kilic, Shift’s founder, told the BBC that the goal of this data-gathering exercise is “to advance humanity.” He pointed to existing AI models like ChatGPT, which can create sentences based on previously written passages of text available online. But he also mentioned that every kitchen, living room, and tool is slightly different, meaning robots will need to be trained to adapt to various spaces and utilize different items. The biggest difficulty, Kilic explained, is that to work effectively, the cleaners will need to collect “tonnes” of data.
“In the real world, every object is different, the lighting is different, and nothing is the same as it was a couple of hours earlier,” he said. “Models need to learn how their hands, cameras, and environments work together.” The company’s business model relies on selling the valuable data it gathers from inside people’s homes, anonymised, to robotics and other AI companies for training purposes.
Eventually, Kilic said Shift could offer free or discounted services covering “any skill humanity can demonstrate.” He noted that besides cleaning apartments in New York, the company also has mechanics fixing cars in Turkey. There appears to be no limit to what humanoid robots may one day be capable of, and the BBC has also reported on the development of robots to assist human soldiers on the battlefield.
Now, hold on a second—data and privacy experts have warned consumers to be cautious about offering up their data, especially access to their homes, in exchange for supposedly free services. Rory Mir, director of open access and tech community engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said there’s been a “concerning increase in ‘pay-for-privacy’ and ‘data-bribing’ practices from companies.” “While it might come with money or a service upfront, the data you share has a way of coming back to bite you,” he cautioned.
Mir added that sharing data contributes to “systems that might not have your best interests at heart.” Calli Schroeder, director of the AI and human rights programme at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic), described Shift’s move as “a diabolically creative way to sell privacy invasion.” She warned that the technology being developed from the data collected could potentially leave cleaners out of work. The benefit of a free apartment cleaning is “a pittance” compared to the potential profit that could be made from compiling and selling valuable datasets. “I think people wildly underestimate the level of sensitive information that in-home recordings would pick up,” she said.
However, Kilic argued that Shift is “the most honest platform by far regarding what happens to your data.” He noted that clearly, your data is being used every single day, but you often don’t know what for and you aren’t being compensated for it. “But a free service means at least you are being paid, and it is as honest and as transactional as that,” he added. “If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. We don’t expect everyone to like it, and that is fine.”
While some are concerned about the privacy implications of Shift’s plans, others are excited about the opportunity to play an active role in the AI revolution. My cleaners expressed their belief that AI is set to change the world of work dramatically, but those who embrace it early have nothing to fear. One of them even sent a filming and monitoring kit home to his mother, who records footage from her own point of view while performing tasks around the house.
And while they were being paid what the firm claimed to be above the going rate for cleaners in New York, the company’s team of Gen Z cleaning staff appeared genuinely excited to be part of the AI boom, even if it meant getting their hands dirty in apartment after apartment in New York City. So, what does this mean for the future of cleaning and privacy? Bakalım bundan sonra ne olacak?
Kaynak: Orijinal Haber
