'Will AI wash dishes?' Pune woman shares video of instant house help with camera on her head

AI training using head-mounted cameras to record assembly, tool usage, or sorting has become a common practice in many industries. A woman in Pune was left shocked when she called an instant house help from Pronto, and she arrived wearing a camera on her head. As she washed the dishes, the camera recorded her actions. The woman took to social media to share her experience. She questioned what the future holds and whether AI will start washing dishes as well.

People are questioning how safe it is to allow a stranger into your home with an AI camera. Pronto is a Bengaluru startup that sends cleaners, launderers and cooks to your door within 10 minutes. According to some reports, an internal investor memo by the company said that Pronto is “developing a data business leveraging its workforce to capture real-world household data for robotics labs.”

Some netizens think the cameras are to monitor the work the help are doing. However, most of them are convinced that it is being done to train AI.

Factory workers are wearing AI cameras on their heads

Many companies have started telling their workers to wear cameras on their heads, which has led to fears that they are preparing to hand over blue-collar jobs to AI. The first-person perspective visual data, also known as egocentric, to train computer vision models, Embodied AI, and robotic foundation models.

While traditional computer vision models are trained on security camera videos and phone recordings, head-mounted cameras capture the exact visual field, gaze direction, head movement, and spatial orientation of a person performing a task. Egocentric videos are used to train humanoid robots on how hand-object interactions happen.

Factory workers in some places have been asked to wear these cameras, which has raised concerns regarding workplace surveillance, informed consent, and job displacement. Training AI models means that companies are looking to automate manual tasks.