Shift, a startup from German AI lab microagi, offers free apartment cleaning services in exchange for footage of household chores. This data is sold to AI labs and robotics companies to train physical AI systems. The service has seen significant demand, with initial sessions selling out.
Shift, a startup from German AI lab microagi, is offering free apartment cleaning services in New York City. The condition for the free service is that cleaners wear head-mounted cameras to record footage of household chores, which is then sold as training data to AI labs and robotics companies. The company's launch video went viral, attracting over 8 million views, and the initial 250 cleaning sessions sold out immediately. Shift is part of a broader industry effort to acquire real-world data for developing physical AI and robots. microagi, founded by former Formula One engineers Bercan Kilic and Yoan Iliev, and AI researcher Anton Poletaev, aims to develop 'end-to-end physical AGI.' Shift currently operates in 15 countries with 14,000 data collectors. The company believes this model can help transition to an economy with more abundant goods and services. Shift's General Manager, Harry Kilberg, stated that the unit economics are favorable due to proprietary data processing technology that yields high-quality, anonymized data, with faces and screens automatically blurred and no audio captured. The idea originated from early users who were already recording themselves and offered cleaning services. Shift plans to expand its services beyond cleaning to include cooking and plumbing, and to broaden its geographic reach across the US and other countries.
This initiative addresses the significant challenge of creating comprehensive real-world datasets for robotics, which is crucial for advancing physical AI and potentially leading to more abundant goods and services.