Why an AI company cleaned my New York City apartment for free
Picture this: a team of camera-clad cleaners and a private chef to boot, all wired with high-tech recording apparatus show up at your home.
You are not part of a reality TV show, and have not woken up in an Aldous Huxley or Margaret Atwood novel.
Instead, you are a resident of New York City, where AI companies are sending free cooking and cleaning staff straight to people's doors.
But, there is a catch: this AI company is gathering data to train the next generation of cooking and cleaning robots, and every inch of your apartment is now being recorded.
The initiative, dubbed Shift by AI firm Micro AGI, is part of a growing number of companies developing the next generation of autonomous robots, which tech bosses hope will be able to do everything from the washing up to serving as live-in personal carers.
At my apartment on New York's Upper East Side, I am greeted by two mid-twenties college graduates who have bounced around the start-up world and were looking for work.
Because demand for the free cleans is so high, they are stationed in New York indefinitely, cleaning around five apartments a day, five days a week. The only difference between these guys and a regular cleaner is they have built-in cameras attached to their caps, connected via a lead to their mobile phones.
The main aim of the offer is to perform tasks requiring dexterity, to train the robots of the future to use their hands. As a result, the cleaners were intensely focused on their hands while carrying out the job.
'Tonnes' of data
Bercan Kilic, Shift's founder, told the BBC the goal of the data-gathering exercise is "to advance humanity".
He pointed to existing AI models such as ChatGPT, which are able to create sentences based on previously written passages of text available online. But he said every kitchen, living room and tool is slightly different, so robots will need to be trained to adapt to being in different spaces and using different items.
The biggest difficulty, Kilic said, is that to work, its cleaners will need to collect "tonnes" of data.
"In the real world, every object is different, the lighting is different and nothing is the same as it was a couple of hours earlier. Models need to learn how their hands, cameras and environments work together," he said.
The company's business model relies on it being able to sell the valuable data it gathers from inside people's homes, anonymised, to robotics and other AI companies to train robots.
Eventually, Kilic said Shift could offer free or discounted services covering "any skill humanity can demonstrate", noting that as well as cleaning apartments in New York, the company also has mechanics fixing cars in Turkey.
There appears to be no limit to what humanoid robots will one day be able to do, and the BBC has also reported on the development of robots to help human soldiers on the battlefield.
Privacy concerns
Data and privacy experts warned consumers to be wary of offering up their data - especially access to their homes - in exchange for purportedly free services.
Rory Mir, director of open access and tech community engagement at campaign group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said it has seen a "concerning increase in 'pay-for-privacy' and 'data-bribing' practices from companies".
"While it might come with money or a service upfront, the data you share has a way of coming back to bite you. Even if you trust the business collecting it, there is always a risk of them sharing that information with other businesses or governments," he said.
"We have just lived through decades of our data being used to manipulate us with advertising and predatory practices like surveillance pricing."
Mir added that sharing data contributes to "systems that might not have your best interests at heart".
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And Calli Schroeder, director of the AI and human rights programme at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic), said Shift's move was "a diabolically creative way to sell privacy invasion".
She said the technology being developed off the back of the data being collected could one day leave cleaners out of work. And she warned that even the benefit of a free apartment cleaning is "a pittance" compared to the potential profit that could be made compiling and selling valuable datasets.
"I think people wildly underestimate the level of sensitive information that in-home recordings would pick up," she said.
'We don't expect everyone to like it'
However, Kilic said Shift was "the most honest platform by far regarding what happens to your data".
"Clearly your data is being used every single day, but you don't know what for and you are not being paid," he said in relation to the data collected on users by websites and social media companies.
"But a free service means at least you are being paid, and it is as honest and as transactional as that," he added.
"If you don't want to do it, you don't have to. We don't expect everyone to like it and that is fine."
While some are concerned about the privacy implications of Shift's plans, others are excited about the opportunity to play an active role in the AI revolution.
My cleaners spoke about the belief that AI is set to change the world of work dramatically, but that those who embrace it early have nothing to fear. One of them has even sent a filming and monitoring kit home to his mother, who records footage from her own point of view while performing tasks around the house.
And, while they were being paid what the firm claimed to be above the going rate for cleaners in New York, the company's team of Gen Z cleaning staff appeared genuinely excited to be part of the AI boom, even if it meant getting their hands dirty in apartment after apartment in New York City.
