Forget about delivering food or driving people to the airport. Training AI or taking photos of store shelves could be the jobs of the future.
DoorDash is starting to offer jobs beyond delivering food and other orders, the company announced Thursday. The jobs, called “tasks” at DoorDash, include taking photos of store shelves to monitor out-of-stock items and helping self-driving delivery vehicles get back on the road.
The delivery service is also piloting a new app that allows gig workers to help train AI by completing tasks. “It’s like filming your daily routine or recording yourself speaking in another language,” the company said.
The new gigs show how DoorDash can leverage its existing delivery workers into other areas of the business that still need improvement. AI or retail technology, Guggenheim Securities analyst Taylor Manley told Business Insider.
Self-driving cars tracking store inventory and deliveries will likely be a job for AI someday, but for now it’s creating an opportunity for gig workers.
“This is a new world problem, and they’re applying an old world solution to it,” Manley said.
DoorDash isn’t the first major delivery or ride-hailing app to move into tasks outside of these areas.
Last year, Instacart announced it was piloting a feature that would allow gig workers to take photos of store shelves and displays to track inventory and let food brands see what their products look like in-store.
And Uber said it is using gig workers, from drivers to workers with graduate degrees, to train its AI.
AI training and inventory tracking are becoming side hustles for gig workers
For now, gigs are primarily a supplemental income source for delivery drivers and ride-hailing workers. But that could change as self-driving cars become more common in both of these tasks.
One DoorDash gig worker in Texas told Business Insider that he completed one of the company’s new tasks at a grocery store as part of a pilot last October. For this gig, I took about 180 photos of specific sections of the store, such as the dairy and cereal sections. The payment was about $36 and took about 30 minutes to complete. DoorDash did not say what the photos would be used for, the employee said.
DoorDash employees said the job wasn’t as demanding as carrying or delivering groceries, but they’ve stuck to delivering orders ever since.
Shortly after taking the photo, the employee said he delivered a grocery order for $62.
“I’ll do that instead this time,” she said.
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