How AI Cleaners Are Scrubbing NYC Apartments for Free—and Watching Closely

In New York City, a company called Shift is offering a unique service: they will clean your apartment for free. However, there is a catch. The cleaners who come to your home wear special hats with cameras attached to them. These cameras record everything the cleaners do as they work. The reason for this is that Shift is collecting data to help train robots to clean and cook in the future. The company believes that by recording how real people clean and cook, they can teach robots to do these tasks more effectively.

When a BBC reporter tried out the service, he was visited by two young cleaners who had worked at different start-ups before. They are stationed in New York and clean about five apartments a day, five days a week. The main difference between them and regular cleaners is the camera equipment they wear. The cameras are connected to their phones and record everything from the cleaner's point of view. The company says this is important because every home is different, and robots need to learn how to handle all kinds of kitchens, living rooms, and tools. The goal is to collect a lot of data so that robots can learn to use their hands and adapt to new environments.

Bercan Kilic, the founder of Shift, says that the company wants to help humanity by making robots smarter. He points out that robots need to learn from real-life situations, not just from instructions. The company plans to sell the data they collect to other companies that are building robots. They say the data will be anonymous, so it will not show who lives in the apartment. However, some experts are worried about privacy. They warn that letting a company record inside your home could be dangerous, as the data might be shared with other businesses or even the government. Some people are excited to be part of this new technology, while others are more cautious. The cleaners working for Shift are happy to be involved in something that could change the future, even if it means being recorded while they work. Shift says that using their service is a choice, and they try to be honest about what they do with the data.