Agarwal notes that the industry is becoming more crowded and expects dozens more competitors to emerge in India this year, stating that they pay more for that tier of data collection because of what is being asked of people.
Ashim is one of hundreds of thousands of workers across the world paid to record their activities, with his footage collected by a local company that might employ hundreds of people filming their work.
Some of that work trickles down to workers in India, where there is no shortage of individuals prepared to wear a camera for a few dollars a day.
Indian workers are being paid to film themselves at work, providing video footage that is subsequently sold to technology companies and research organisations to train artificial intelligence systems.
Every robotics company and frontier AI lab requires specific kinds of data, including industrial tasks, agriculture, household chores, and small business work such as pottery, garment-making, embroidery, and candle-making.
The collected data is used in particular to develop so-called physical AI, a type of artificial intelligence capable of controlling robots in the real world.
The broader problem, as outlined, is that if machines do start to take over, there will be little workers can do about it.
However, Agarwal argues that the value of that kind of work will quickly become eroded as more companies compete for collection contracts.
We need to develop a socio-technical system in which ethics is upheld through human agency, ensuring that AI delivers beneficence rather than maleficence.