Indian Textile Workers Film Themselves Training the Robots That May Take Their Jobs

At the Texworth factory, 40-year-old Shoba Kirubakaran was wrapping yellow aprons decorated with chickens in plastic for the brand Designs By Danica when three men walked the floor handing out cameras and headsets. It was the third time she had been told to wear a GoPro, she said. The device records her every hand gesture so that AI robots can learn to take over the job. NPR informed her of that purpose during an interview. "Nobody told me anything about it," she said.

Kirubakaran has worked in the factory for 10 years, six days a week, from about 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., earning $90 a month. The money has helped her and her husband, a rickshaw driver, raise two sons. "I only know how to do this job," she said.

The practice drew public attention in April after a video went viral showing rows of textile factory workers wearing the headsets. "This is not a scene from a science fiction film," a News9Live anchor warned. "That is happening right now on factory floors across India." AsiaNet News told viewers: "Indian workers are training AI robots to take their jobs."

India is emerging as a key location for such recordings because of its large population, relatively low wages and relative openness to new technology, according to the report. Developers need millions of hours of what the industry calls egocentric data, gathered from the perspective of a human wearing a camera. "That can be obtained only by emulating or collecting data from real human beings that does the job," said Prathosh A.P., a professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. "Think of today's AIs as brains without a body," he said. "Now you have to give them all motor skills ... to do all kinds of intricate motions that we do using a physical body."

Some workers sign up because they are paid by the hour for the data. Many others, like Kirubakaran, appear to be made to record themselves working without explanation. "Call it what it is, which is exploitation of labor," said Astha Kapoor, co-founder of the Aapti Institute, which studies the impact of technology on people.

India's workforce is the world's second largest, with 600 million people working or seeking work. "Training workers, retraining workers, absorbing them into new occupations," said Amit Basole, an economics professor at Azim Premji University. "Do we have the policy agility to do that? I doubt it."

Other experts say a future full of factory and domestic robots is not imminent in India, at least in the near term, because the machines cost a great deal and consume large amounts of power, which is unreliable and costly in parts of the country. "We may be able to make the robots, but they're bloody expensive to run, right?" Kapoor said. "Humans are cheaper to run than robots."

The strain is visible in Karur, where the Indian technology company Objectways collects egocentric data to sell to AI developers. Large generators rumble to keep electricity flowing to its buildings. The company occupies at least four building blocks in the town and appears to be one of its biggest white-collar employers.

Its chief executive, Ravi Shankar, is a Karur native who moved to Arizona decades ago, and he largely agrees with Kapoor about robot deployment in India. Compared with human labor, he said, "I think it will be more expensive. I don't think it's going to be cheaper." He said his Indian clients want robots for jobs they cannot find people to do, such as tapping rubber from rubber trees, jobs in isolated locations such as dusting solar panels in rural areas, and physically grueling work such as destemming chillies for processing.

Inside Objectways, employee Rajeshkumar Ramaswamy demonstrated how the company trains robots for repetitive industrial tasks for foreign clients through what he calls exocentric data, collected from the point of view of a robot. Instead of filming workers' hands, young men with GoPro cameras strapped to their heads record themselves handling what look like grippy robot claws. One man filmed himself using the claws to screw bottle lids on and off. Dozens of bottles, large and small, plastic and metallic, were laid out so the robot could learn to identify the many shapes and sizes of a water bottle.

Editor's Summary

Workers at a textile plant in Karur, India, are being recorded with GoPro cameras to produce training data for AI robots, in many cases without being told the purpose of the footage. India has become a major source of such data because of its large, low-wage workforce, while experts and a data-collection company's chief executive alike say high costs and unreliable power make large-scale robot deployment in the country unlikely for now. The episode has raised questions about consent and about whether India's labor policies can absorb workers displaced by automation.