New Way to Earn Dollars from Home: Another Online Employment Emerges

(Digital Itla) A new online employment avenue is being introduced in the world, bringing forward a new method to earn dollars sitting at home. AI technology has created new earning opportunities for common people, say experts. While the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence is raising questions about the future of millions of jobs worldwide, this technology has simultaneously created new earning opportunities for common people. Thousands of individuals in India are now sitting in homes, factories, and specialized studios making videos that are being used to teach future AI robots how to perform tasks in a human manner. According to a report by news agency Al Jazeera, 25-year-old Nagireddy Sriramachandra from the southern Indian city of Chennai is among those who record videos from home for training AI systems. She straps a smartphone to her head to film daily household chores. These tasks include cutting mangoes, performing routine kitchen work, and other household activities. In return for these videos, she is paid 731 Pakistani Rupees (250 Indian Rupees, which is approximately 2.6 US Dollars) per hour of recording. These seemingly ordinary videos are actually considered highly valuable data for global technology companies because they help AI-based robots learn human movements and actions. According to experts, while AI chatbots and image generators already learn from vast digital data available on the internet, training robots that move and work in the real world is a much more complex process. For this very purpose, 'egocentric data'—or videos recorded from a human eye perspective—is being collected so that robots can mimic human behaviors and movements. According to the report, some individuals do this work from their homes, while others record data in factories or specialized centers using video glasses, head-mounted cameras, and motion sensors. Later, these recordings are sent to AI data companies through specialized apps. Some such companies maintain offices in both India and the US, and their clientele includes large international Fortune 500 companies. Experts associated with the AI industry state that the global market for humanoid robots is expanding rapidly. Experts say that along with this new earning opportunity, certain concerns also exist. According to estimates, more than one billion robots will be in use by 2050, the majority of which will work for industrial and commercial purposes. For this reason, a continuous increase in demand for data required to train AI models is expected. Aditi Surie, a digital labor expert associated with the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, stated that the need for such data collection tasks could increase further in the future. She explained that as artificial intelligence systems become more complex, they will require more data related to real human activities. India's government think-tank, NITI Aayog, warned in a report that most discussions regarding artificial intelligence remain focused on the potential elimination of white-collar or office jobs, while less attention is paid to its impact on hundreds of millions of workers associated with the informal sector. According to the report, 55-year-old Poni, who has been making flower garlands by the roadside in Bengaluru for the past decade, is also among those who recorded videos of their activities for AI training. She mentioned that the new generation doing work like hers might face difficulties in the future because those very skills are being taught to robots.