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What do you think would happen if you were to open your New York City apartment’s door one day? Instead of getting greeted by cleaners, imagine that a crew of engineers, armed with advanced audio recording devices, equipped with cameras and having a personal chef with them. It’s not an episode of some sci-fi TV show and you did not accidentally find yourself in a fictional book. This is a new reality in New York City, where a young company offers free luxurious apartment services in exchange for something more expensive than money.
This company is called Micro AGI, and its project named Shift is trying to cope with one of the biggest problems of the contemporary technology – teach robots to live with humans. Although the opportunity to get a free cleaning and/or cooking can look quite attractive for busy city residents, there is one problem here. The point is that all your actions, conversations and even your personal life will be filmed and analyzed to create the next generation of autonomous robots

Robotics' Future In One Apartment

The aim of all technological innovators is to build robots that can perform the boring chores in people's lives. Be it cleaning dishes or taking care of them as personal assistants, the dream may seem big. However, there is one major obstacle ahead. While AI models such as ChatGPT learn everything about text through internet scraping, robots live in the physical realm, which is chaotic, unpredictable and ever-changing.

At the Upper East Side apartment, this fact becomes evident. The employees sent out by Micro AGI are usually tech-savvy young graduates seeking to get experience in the startup environment. They carry special camera equipment mounted on their headgear, connected to their mobiles via lead.

Since the demand for such complementary services is rapidly increasing, such technicians work on a tight schedule, managing to visit around five homes each day, five days a week. These technicians are fully engrossed during these visits. This is not cleaning the countertops or the rugs. Instead, they engage in very dexterous actions so as to gather the exact data that can help the AI imitate human hands.

Gathering 'Tonnes' of Human Behaviour

Bercan Kilic, who founded Shift, refers to this venture as a 'necessary step toward advancing humanity.' According to him, since each and every kitchen, floor plan, and tool set is different, robots need vast amounts of observational data to learn how to adapt to all these situations.

“Nothing looks the same in reality; everything is different, the light is different and things don’t stay the same as they were even two hours ago,” Kilic explains. “The models have to learn how their hands, cameras and environment interact.”

The business plan of Micro AGI relies on data. By harvesting this raw and anonymous video, they hope to create databases which can then be sold to other robotics and AI firms. However, the breadth of their goals is much bigger than just doing housework; they are currently deploying mechanics in Turkey for filming car repairs with the hope of proving that almost anything humans know can be taught to an AI machine.

A High Price Paid for 'Free' Services

In spite of the novelty and the obvious benefit, experts on privacy are warning of a major threat. It is noted that the exchange of privacy for convenience is a risky move. Rory Mir, director of open access and technology community outreach at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is noting an "alarming trend in what I would call 'data bribing.'"

He stresses that although the service might seem free now, the price of such an action remains unclear. "The data you give will definitely come back to haunt you. While you may feel comfortable sharing that information with a company, even a well-respected one, there is no way you can be sure that the company won't give out that data to other companies and government organizations," he says.
However, Calli Schroeder, the director of the AI and Human Rights Programme at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is even more pessimistic about the project. She calls the programme a "diabolically creative way to sell privacy invasion." In her opinion, the amount of useful data collected by monitoring the process of cleaning inside one's house far surpasses the value of the free cleaning service itself. In addition, according to Schroeder, people do not appreciate the amount of personal data that can be collected while the camera captures everything that the cleaner sees during his cleaning of every corner of one's private property.

The Transactional Future Ahead

Faced with these objections, Kilic holds his ground. He maintains that Shift is the most transparent platform, insisting that the users have been tracked by the social media companies and websites for years now without even knowing about it.

"Obviously, your data is getting used every single day, but you do not know why, and you are not paid for it," says Kilic. "But with a free service, at least you are getting paid, and it is as transactional as that."

The excitement of being at the forefront of the AI revolution seems to make up for any invasion of privacy for many people. Some individuals who take part in this process see it as an empowering activity and a way to actively shape the future of the world of work. Being involved in such a transition is an exhilarating stage of their career for the Gen Z workers.

It is still unclear whether it is the beginning of a new era of household help or the end of privacy in the domestic sphere. What is clear, however, is that along with the increasing interest in AI development, the line between our personal life and the world of data keeps disappearing, one cleaning of the apartment after another.