Faven Mulugeta 为 NPR 报道 印度卡鲁尔 — — 三名男子在印度南部城市卡鲁尔的Texworth纺织厂宽敞的车间里大步走动，向工人分发GoPro和智能眼镜，其中包括40岁的肖巴·基鲁巴卡兰。她正在为品牌Designs By Danica装填印有鸡的黄色围裙，并将其装入塑料包装。基鲁巴卡兰表示，这是她第三次被要求佩戴GoPro。
Faven Mulugeta for NPR KARUR, India — Three men stride across a cavernous textile factory floor of Texworth in the southern Indian city of Karur, handing GoPros and smart glasses to workers, including 40-year-old Shoba Kirubakaran. She's packing yellow aprons decorated with chickens into plastic wrapping for the brand Designs By Danica It's the third time Kirubakaran says she's been told to don a GoPro.
该设备正在记录她的每一个手势，以训练AI机器人接管这项工作 — — 她表示公司并未向她透露这一事实。NPR在最近一天采访她时告知了她这一情况。她说：“没有人告诉我任何关于这件事的事情。”
It's recording her every hand gesture, to train AI robots to take over this job — a fact that she says the company did not share with her. NPR informed her when they interviewed her on a recent day. "Nobody told me anything about it," she says.
基鲁巴卡兰在该工厂工作已有10年，每周工作6天，从大约上午9点到下午6点。她每月收入90美元。凭借这笔收入，她帮助丈夫 — — 一名三轮车司机 — — 抚养了他们的两个儿子。她还补充道：“我只会做这份工作。”
Kirubakaran has worked in the factory for 10 years, 6 days a week, from around 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. She makes $90 a month. With that money, she's helped her husband, a rickshaw driver, raise their two sons. And she adds, "I only know how to do this job."
类似这样的场景在4月震动了印度公众，因为一段视频走红，视频中显示纺织厂工人排成行佩戴这些头显。一位News9Live的新闻主播警告说：“这不是科幻电影里的场景。” “这正在印度各地的工厂车间里发生。”另一家媒体AsiaNet News警告称：“印度工人正在训练AI机器人来取代他们的工作。”寻求“以自我为中心的数据”由于印度人口众多、工资相对较低以及对新技术相对开放，印度正成为记录此类影像的关键地点之一。
Scenes like these shook the Indian public in April after a video went viral showing rows of textile factory workers wearing these headsets. "This is not a scene from a science fiction film," warned one news anchor from outlet News9Live. "That is happening right now on factory floors across India." Another outlet, AsiaNet News warned: "Indian workers are training AI robots to take their jobs." Seeking "egocentric data" India is emerging as one key place to record this kind of footage because of its large population, relatively low wages and relative openness to new tech.
而开发者需要数百万小时的此类影像，行业称之为“以自我为中心的数据” — — 即通过佩戴摄像头的人类视角收集的数据，用于训练AI机器人。
And developers need millions of hours of this footage, what the industry calls egocentric data— data gathered from the perspective of a human with a camera to train AI robots.
“只有通过模拟或从真正执行该工作的人类身上收集数据才能获得这样的数据，”普拉托什·A.P.说道。
"That can be obtained only by emulating or collecting data from real human beings that does the job," says Prathosh A.P.
一位在班加罗尔印度科学研究院工作的教授——和许多其他印度人一样，他用首字母缩写来指代自己的姓氏。“把今天的人工智能想象成没有身体的大脑，”他说。“现在你必须给它们所有的运动技能……让它们能够完成我们用实体身体完成的各种精细动作。”
a professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru Like many other Indians, he uses initials to refer to his family name. "Think of today's AIs as brains without a body," he says. "Now you have to give them all motor skills ... to do all kinds of intricate motions that we do using a physical body."
一些工人因为按小时计酬而感到不满。但看起来还有许多其他人，如Kirubakaran，被迫记录自己工作的过程，却没有任何解释。“把它称作它本来的面目——也就是对劳动的剥削，”Aapti Institute（阿普蒂研究所）联合创始人、研究技术对人类影响的Astha Kapoor 说。
Some workers areg up because they're paid by the hour for the data. But it appears many others, like Kirubakaran, are simply made to record herself working without any explanation. "Call it what it is, which is exploitation of labor," says Astha Kapoor, co-founder of the Aapti Institute, which studies the impact of technology on people.
这将对印度劳动力——全球第二大劳动力，拥有6亿在职或求职者——产生何种影响？“培训工人，重新培训工人，使他们进入新职业，”Azim Premji University（阿齐姆·普雷姆吉大学）经济学教授Amit Basole 说。“我们有足够的政策灵活性来实现吗？我持怀疑态度。”电力问题但一些专家表示，充满工厂和家用机器人的未来并非近在眼前。
What will the impact be for India's workforce — the world's second largest, with 600 million people working or seeking work? "Training workers, retraining workers, absorbing them into new occupations," says Amit Basole economics professor at Azim Premji University. "Do we have the policy agility to do that? I doubt it." The power question But that vision of a future full of factory and domestic robots isn't exactly around the corner, say some experts.
人工智能机器人不太可能在印度大规模部署——至少在近期——因为它们成本高昂且耗电量大，而印度部分地区的电力既不可靠也很昂贵。“我们也许能制造机器人，但它们的运行成本真的很高，对吧？”Aapti Institute 的 Kapoor 说。“人类的运行成本比机器人低。”
AI robots are unlikely to be deployed at scale in India — in the near future at least — because they cost a lot of money and consume a lot of power, which is both unreliable and costly across parts of India. "We may be able to make the robots, but they're bloody expensive to run, right?" says Kapoor of the Aapti Institute. "Humans are cheaper to run than robots."
这种电力危机在卡鲁尔（Karur）也很明显。当地一家印度科技公司 Objectways 收集自我中心数据并将其出售给人工智能开发者。巨大的发电机轰鸣作响，以确保为其供电的建筑拥有不间断的电力。该公司似乎是该镇最大的白领雇主之一，占据了镇上至少四个建筑块。
That power crisis is evident even in Karur, where an Indian tech company, Objectways, gathers egocentric data to sell onto AI developers. Massive generators loudly rumble to ensure seamless electricity in the buildings it powers. The company appears to be one of the town's biggest white collar employers, occupying at least four building blocks in the town.
首席执行官拉维·尚卡尔是卡鲁尔人，几十年前移居亚利桑那州。他在AI机器人在印度的部署问题上与卡普尔持出人意料的一致看法。”我认为这会更昂贵，”他谈到AI机器人时说，与人力劳动相比。”我不认为这会更便宜。”他说，他的印度客户希望得到帮助，为他们找不到人去做的工作设计AI机器人，比如从橡胶树上采集橡胶；地理位置偏远的工作，比如清理农村地区太阳能板上的灰尘；以及体力消耗大的工作，比如为加工去除辣椒梗。
The CEO, Ravi Shankar, is a Karur native who migrated to Arizona decades ago. He's in perhaps unlikely agreement with Kapoor about the deployment of AI robots in India. "I think it will be more expensive," he says of AI robots, in comparison to human labor. "I don't think it's going to be cheaper." He says his Indian clients want help designing AI robots for jobs that they can't find people to do, like tapping rubber from rubber trees; jobs that are geographically isolated, like dusting off solar panels in rural areas, and jobs that are physically grueling, like destemming chillies for processing.
在Objectways公司，员工拉杰什库马尔·拉马斯瓦米向我们展示了他们如何通过他所说的“收集”——即从机器人视角收集的数据——来训练其他机器人为外国客户完成重复性工业工作。他们不是拍摄真实工人的手部动作，而是让戴着头戴式GoPro摄像头的年轻男子在操作看起来像机器人爪子的夹具时，记录自己完成工作的过程。一人用这些爪子记录自己反复拧开和拧紧瓶盖。有几十个瓶子——大小不同，塑料和金属材质的都有。
Inside Objectways, employee Rajeshkumar Ramaswamy shows us how they are training other robots to do repetitive industrial jobs for foreign clients, through what he calls collecting— that's data collected from the point of view of a robot. Instead of filming hands of actual workers, young men with GoPro cameras strapped to their heads record themselves doing jobs while holding and manipulating what look like grippy robot claws. One man records himself using the claws to screw bottle lids off and on. There are dozens of bottles — big, small, plastic, metallic.
拉马斯瓦米说，这是为了教机器人如何识别这种被称为“水瓶”的物体的各种形状和尺寸。“机器人需要学习什么是[一个]水瓶，”他说。
Ramaswamy says it's to teach robots how to identify all the different shapes and sizes of this thing called a water bottle. The "robot needs to learn what is [a] water bottle," he says.
拉马斯瓦米说，他们会重复这个拧瓶盖的过程大约100次，并将这些数据输入AI机器人，使它能够自行学习如何用自己的夹爪完成这项工作。
Ramaswamy says they'll repeat this process of screwing bottle tops about 100 times and feed that data into an AI robot, so it can see for itself how to use its own grippy hands to do the job.
“机器人就像一个孩子，” 拉马斯瓦米说。“我们是人类。我们正在教机器人需要做什么。” 该公司还训练机器人做家务 — — 比如折叠毛巾、收拾书籍和拆包。它将这些数据卖给希望制造家用机器人的 AI 公司 — — 已经有几款在市场上出售，包括一个知名型号，外形像一个无面孔的仆人，零售价为 20,000 美元。在假想厨房工作，上几层楼梯，拉马斯瓦米向我们展示了他们让人类在模拟环境中记录自己做家务的地方 — — 一层被布置成宜家风格的三居室房子。在假想厨房里，一位女性，Rani N.，正在记录自己切洋葱的过程。
"The robot is like a child," Ramaswamy says. "We are the humans. We are teaching the robots what needs to be done." The company also trains robots to do household tasks — like folding towels, putting away books and unpacking bags. It sells that data to AI companies hoping to create domestic robots — there's already a few on the market, including one prominent model that looks like a faceless servant and retails for $20,000 Working in a fake kitchen Up a few flights of stairs, Ramaswamy shows us where they have humans recording themselves doing domestic jobs, on a floor kitted out to look like an Ikea-style 3-bedroom house. In a fake kitchen, a woman, Rani N., records herself chopping onions.
想要获取家务第一人称录像的客户大多在美国，所以拉马斯瓦米说，他们也付钱让美国人自己录制做家务的视频 — — 这样他们的客户就能用美国特定的数据来训练 AI 机器人。
Most clients who want first-person recordings of domestic chores are in the U.S., so Ramaswamy says they also pay Americans to record themselves doing housework — so their clients can train AI robots on American-specific data.
例如，在印度，很多人用不锈钢盘子吃饭。一个被训练去夹起不锈钢盘子的机器人可能会用很大的力气去抓它，然后可能会掉下来 — — 没什么大不了的。但如果同样的机器人试图去夹起陶瓷盘子 — — 而很多美国人正是用这种盘子 — — 同样的力度就会导致它“被分离成微小颗粒”，拉马斯瓦米说 — — 也就是说，它会碎成一堆碎片。
For instance, in India, many folks use stainless steel plates to eat. A robot trained to pick up a stainless steel plate could use a lot of pressure to grip it, and could drop it — no harm done. But if the same robot tried to pick up a ceramic plate, which is what many Americans use, the same pressure would cause it to "be separated into minute particles," Ramaswamy says — that is, smashed to bits.
而为了为要求生态中心数据的客户积累人类用手做工作的录像，拉马斯瓦米说，他们付钱让印度全国数百人去做家务 — — 比如住在城镇边缘的 24 岁青年 Sneha Jegadish。
And to amass recordings of humans doing work with their hands for clients who request ecocentric data, Ramaswamy says, they pay hundreds of people across India to undertake domestic jobs, like Sneha Jegadish, a 24-year-old who lives on the edge of town.
Jegadish 将她的智能手机夹在耳机上，开始切胡萝卜，她的手机记录下她每一个手部动作。
Jegadish clipped her smart phone to a headset and began chopping a carrot, her phone recording her every hand movement.
她每天记录自己做几个小时的家务，每小时大约赚2.60美元，每月大约能赚120美元。杰加迪什会折衣服、擦地板、洗碗——这些是她成长过程中从未被期望做的事情，因为她母亲希望她专注于学业。因此，当她几个月前得到这份工作时，“我母亲不得不教我怎么做这些工作，”她笑着说。
She records herself doing housework for a few hours a day, for about $2.60 an hour, and makes around $120 a month. Jegadish folds clothes, wipes the floor, does the dishes — jobs she was never expected to do growing up, because her mother wanted her to focus on her studies. So when she got this gig a few months ago, "my mother had to show me how to do those jobs," she smiles.
不管有没有钱，这仍然是苦差事，杰加迪什说。有一天，她希望能有一个机器人来做她的家务。“我们现在做的工作将来会由机器人来完成，”她说。42岁的纺织工人坎纳吉·佩里亚萨米也得出了同样的结论。
Money or not, it's still drudgery, says Jegadish. One day, she hopes, she'll have a robot to do her housework. "The work we are doing now is going to be done by robots in the future," she says. That's the same conclusion that 42-year-old textile worker Kannagi Periyasaamy has come to.
在纺织厂，佩里亚萨米正在折叠和打包围裙，她的头上戴着一个GoPro摄像头。
At the textile factory, Periyasaamy was folding and packing aprons with a GoPro fastened to her head.
她是少数几个每小时大约赚2.60美元来记录自己工作的工人之一，而且她被告知了原因。她解释道：“我们正在训练它们[机器人]如何打包围裙、如何进行质量检查、如何折叠围裙。”
She's one of the few workers who is paid about $2.60 an hour to record herself, and she's been told why. She explains: "We are training them [the robots] on how to package the aprons, how to do a quality check, how to fold the aprons."
佩里亚萨米说，她已经这样做了过去三个月，足以让她相信，总有一天机器人会接管她的工作。当那一天到来时，她说：“我正在考虑从事农业”——她的家庭拥有一块土地，她可以在那里养牛。与此同时，佩里亚萨米把AI机器人当作她的学生，并说：“我很自豪能教它做好一项工作。”文/文诺德·阿鲁拉帕恩。如需了解我们变化世界中的生活故事，人工智能机器人
Periyasaamy says she's been doing this for the past three months, enough for her to be convinced that someday, a robot will take over her job. When that day comes, she says, "I'm thinking about taking up farming" — the family owns a scrap of land where she could raise cattle. Meanwhile, Periyasaamy thinks of AI robots as her students and says, "I'm proud I can teach it to do a good job." With additional reporting by Vinodh Arulappan For stories about life in our changing world, to NPR's Global Health newsletter. Artificial Intelligence robots