An AI training startup called Shift said it will clean New Yorkers’ homes for free and has plans to expand to other cities as well. Of course, there’s always a catch. In this case, in exchange for cleaning, Shift wants footage of its cleaners at work — scrubbing dishes, wiping counters, dusting tables, and mopping floors. Video of the boring domestic labor is necessary to train robots to clean. That’s harder than it sounds. Unlike other AI tools, robots have to deal with the physical world. That means understanding space, motion, force, friction, weird shapes and materials, awkward lighting, and everything else that humans tend to grasp instinctively. That’s why things like folding clothes, picking up toys, or pouring a glass of water have proven maddening for robotics companies to codify. Teaching machines to do those things takes data — a lot of it. For now, that means maybe letting a human clean your home in a snazzy hat for free so that, eventually, a company can sell you a robot to do it instead.
