在印度的回收场、工厂与建筑工地中，成千上万的劳工正戴著头戴式摄影机或感测设备，以第一人称视角记录下他们分类塑胶、制作鞋子或包装货物等双手操作的微小动作。这些劳工大多不知道，他们每日工作的录像正被用来训练人工智慧，特别是为了让未来的机器人学会如何在真实世界中执行复杂的物理任务，这也意味著他们正在协助开发可能取代自己工作的技术。
实体人工智慧（Embodied AI）面临的最大挑战在于缺乏真实世界的互动数据。为了解决这个问题，全球的科技巨头与新创公司纷纷转向劳动力庞大且成本相对低廉的印度，将其视为获取机器人训练数据的最佳来源。这催生了一个快速成长的资料收集产业，许多新创公司以每小时数美元的价格收购这些经过标记的录像数据，满足美国与中国等地顶尖人工智慧实验室的庞大需求。（关键数字： an hour）
尽管这项新兴产业为许多缺乏选择的劳工带来了额外的收入，但随之而来的道德与隐私问题也引发了广泛的担忧。许多劳工在不知情或未提供充分同意的情况下被拍摄，录制的画面往往涵盖了个人的生活环境与生物特征数据，甚至波及旁人。这场资料收集竞赛凸显了明显的权力不对等，让人质疑这究竟是印度下一个伟大的出口产业，还是一场披著工作外衣的剥削。
Across India's recycling facilities, factories, and construction sites, tens of thousands of workers are wearing head-mounted cameras and sensors to record their intricate hand movements from a first-person perspective as they sort plastic, manufacture shoes, or pack goods. Most of these workers are entirely unaware that the footage of their daily labor is being used to train artificial intelligence, specifically to teach future robots how to perform complex physical tasks in the real world, meaning they are actively helping develop the very technology that could eventually replace them.
The central challenge for embodied AI lies in the lack of real-world interaction data. To solve this, global tech giants and startups have turned to India, with its vast and relatively inexpensive labor force, as the prime source for robot training data. This has spawned a rapidly growing data collection industry, where startups procure and annotate these video recordings for a few dollars an hour to meet the immense, unfulfilled demand from top artificial intelligence laboratories in the United States and China.
Although this emerging industry provides meaningful additional income for many workers with limited options, it raises significant ethical and privacy concerns. Many workers are filmed without a full understanding of the purpose or without giving proper informed consent, and the footage often captures intimate living conditions, biometric data, and unconsenting bystanders. This relentless data collection race highlights a stark power imbalance, raising questions about whether this will become India's next great export industry or a massive exploitative operation disguised as employment.