Imagine this. A team of cleaners equipped with cameras, high-tech recording equipment and, to boot, a personal chef will show up at your home.
You’re not part of a reality TV show, you’re not waking up in an Aldous Huxley or Margaret Atwood novel.
Instead, you are a resident of New York City. In New York City, AI companies are sending free cooking and cleaning staff directly to people’s homes.
However, there is a catch. The AI company is collecting data to train the next generation of cooking and cleaning robots, and every inch of your apartment is recorded.
The initiative, dubbed Shift by AI company Micro AGI, is part of a growing number of companies developing the next generation of autonomous robots, which technology leaders hope will be able to do everything from washing up to serving as live-in caregivers.
At my apartment on New York’s Upper East Side, I’m greeted by two college graduates in their mid-twenties who have been navigating the startup world and looking for work.
Demand for free cleaning is so high that they are stationed in New York indefinitely, cleaning approximately five apartments per day, five days a week. The only difference between these guys and a regular vacuum cleaner is that they have a camera built into the cap and are connected to your phone with a lead wire.
The main purpose of this proposal is to perform tasks that require dexterity and train future robots to use their hands. As a result, cleaners were forced to focus on their hands while working.
