Folding clothes, making coffee and sandwich — Indian workers training AI robots to take their jobs
Why this matters: local context for readers following news across Pakistan and the region.
With a smartphone strapped to her head, Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra films herself slicing mangoes to train AI-powered robots to take on household jobs in the future. Earning just over two dollars for an hour of video, her mundane recordings are invaluable for global tech companies teaching machines how to move like humans in the real world. The 25-year-old is one of a growing army of thousands of AI system trainers in the world’s most populous country. “Who else will give you 250 rupees an hour just for doing housework?” said Sriramyachandra from her kitchen in Chennai in southern India’s Tamil Nadu state. “I may get a robot myself in the future,” she added. This photograph taken on May 15, 2026 shows an Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra wearing a smartphone on her head as she records her actions through motion capture while slicing mangoes at her home in Chennai. — AFP Artificial intelligence chatbots and image generators crunch reams of digital data, but building systems to navigate real-life environments is more challenging. Developers think feeding first-person footage, called “egocentric data”, into specialised AI models will help robots copy humans. Some AI trainers work at home, others in factories or specialised studios — using video glasses, head-mounted cameras and motion sensors. “It blares ‘hands not detected’ when I’m not recording properly,” said Sriramyachandra, who sends recordings via a special app to the AI data company Objectways. This photograph taken on May 13, 2026 shows a worker (R) wearing a RGB camera on her head recording actions through motion capture while arranging colored blocks at AI data company Objectways’ office in Tamil Nadu’s Karur district. — AFP The firm, which has offices in India and the United States, lists Fortune 500 multinationals as clients. It works with Amazon SageMaker, a platform for machine learning models. ‘Better things’ The humanoid robot market is booming, with investment bank Morgan Stanl