عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

The Indian Workers Training AI Robots to Take their Jobs

Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra wears a smartphone on her head as she records her actions through motion capture while slicing mangoes at her home in Chennai. R.Satish BABU / AFP
Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra wears a smartphone on her head as she records her actions through motion capture while slicing mangoes at her home in Chennai. R.Satish BABU / AFP
TT
TT

The Indian Workers Training AI Robots to Take their Jobs

Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra wears a smartphone on her head as she records her actions through motion capture while slicing mangoes at her home in Chennai. R.Satish BABU / AFP
Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra wears a smartphone on her head as she records her actions through motion capture while slicing mangoes at her home in Chennai. R.Satish BABU / AFP

With a smartphone strapped to her head, Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra films herself slicing mangoes to train AI-powered robots to take on household jobs in the future.

Earning just over two dollars for an hour of video, her mundane recordings are invaluable for global tech companies teaching machines how to move like humans in the real world, said AFP.

The 25-year-old is one of a growing army of thousands of AI system trainers in the world's most populous country.

"Who else will give you 250 rupees an hour just for doing housework?" said Sriramyachandra from her kitchen in Chennai in southern India's Tamil Nadu state.

"I may get a robot myself in the future," she added.

Artificial intelligence chatbots and image generators crunch reams of digital data, but building systems to navigate real-life environments is more challenging.

Developers think feeding first-person footage, called "egocentric data", into specialized AI models will help robots copy humans.

Some AI trainers work at home, others in factories or specialized studios -- using video glasses, head-mounted cameras and motion sensors.

"It blares 'hands not detected' when I'm not recording properly," said Sriramyachandra, who sends recordings via a special app to the AI data company Objectways.

The firm, which has offices in India and the United States, lists Fortune 500 multinationals as clients. It works with Amazon SageMaker, a platform for machine learning models.

- 'Better things' -

The humanoid robot market is booming, with investment bank Morgan Stanley predicting there could be over a billion in use by 2050, mostly for industrial and commercial purposes.

"Folding clothes, coffee making... cooking a very specific thing, sandwich making," Objectways head Ravi Shankar said, listing videos requested by clients.

"Some jobs are supposed to be taken over, so humans can go and do better things."

In India, the emerging field of spatial AI is providing new employment -- for now.

The 50-year-old CEO is US-based, but hires workers from Tamil Nadu, where he grew up, one of India's international technology hubs.

At a Karur textile factory, busy with workers attaching labels to caps and ironing cloth bags, AFP saw eight people wearing head cameras and smart glasses supplied by Objectways.

India has positioned itself as a global middleman for the creation, processing and annotation of AI data.

"It's likely that these data collection services will increase", said digital labor expert Aditi Surie, from the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bengaluru.

- Informal workers -

India is aggressively developing its AI industry, but its leaders are aware that, alongside the technology's much-hyped benefits, automation poses risks.

Government think-tank NITI Aayog said that most discussions around artificial intelligence and labor "focus on white-collar professionals and predict an almost certain loss of jobs in the segment" without urgent action.

"Little attention, if any, is paid to how AI can serve India's 490 million informal workers, the very people who form the backbone of our economy," it said in a report released ahead of a global AI summit in India this year.

The think-tank has examined how the technology could help or harm dozens of professions -- from cobblers to sewer cleaners, farmers to tea sellers.

For the last decade, 55-year-old Ponni has sat on a roadside in Bengaluru, the city known as India's Silicon Valley, making flower garlands.

She, too, has been paid to have a phone strapped to her forehead.

"The next generation... who might have to do work similar to mine -- they will face a problem," Ponni said.

- Always wearing a camera -

At an Objectways studio, AI system trainers film themselves performing household tasks in fake, fully furnished apartment rooms.

After several thousand hours of filming, the wallpaper is changed to provide clients with variety.

"Today I sit here, tomorrow I stand there," said engineering graduate Rani N., 21, on a break from filming herself, once again, folding a towel.

Each video lasts about four minutes, and she records around 90 a day -- on nearly every conceivable spot on the bed.

She says the job is "tolerable", but feels like she's always wearing a camera.

In other rooms, colleagues arranged pencil sharpeners, water bottles and crayons in patterns, recording with depth-sensor cameras.

Qanat Consulting Services in Andhra Pradesh, an Objectways subcontractor, supplies about a dozen larger data firms with recordings.

Some of its 2,000 contributors perform tasks with motion-sensor bands on their "wrists, hands and legs", CEO Thaslim Pattan said.

Manish Agarwal of Bengaluru-based Humyn Labs, not related to Objectways, records conversations as well as videos.

Contributors discuss assigned topics -- ranging from politics to entertainment -- for clients wanting to process speech patterns.

Agarwal denies that robots will steal jobs, believing that networks of humans and robots "will work together" one day, he said.

"A welder in India could be managing a welder-robot in Prague," he said.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

Social Media Use on the Rise Among Australian Under-16s After Ban

The TikTok logo is displayed on signage outside TikTok social media app company offices in Culver City, California on September 30, 2025. (AFP)
The TikTok logo is displayed on signage outside TikTok social media app company offices in Culver City, California on September 30, 2025. (AFP)
TT
TT

Social Media Use on the Rise Among Australian Under-16s After Ban

The TikTok logo is displayed on signage outside TikTok social media app company offices in Culver City, California on September 30, 2025. (AFP)
The TikTok logo is displayed on signage outside TikTok social media app company offices in Culver City, California on September 30, 2025. (AFP)

Australian under-16s are increasing their use of social media apps, such as Instagram and TikTok, despite a world-leading ban, data provided by a parental control software company showed Wednesday.

Australia implemented legislation barring children from social media platforms in December, with the UK, France and others following suit.

Youngsters' use of social media fell across the board when the legal restrictions were first implemented, data from parental control app Qustodio showed.

But since then their social media activity has climbed -- even approaching pre-ban levels for some apps.

The use of apps TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat among 10–12-year-olds and 13- to 15-year-olds was on the rise, data from parental control app Qustodio showed.

In the case of video-sharing site TikTok, 25.9 percent of 13-15 year-olds are still using the app -- just over a percentage point lower than before the ban came into force.

And use among 10–12-year-olds was just 0.06 percentage points below where it was before the ban.

"They could be accessing these platforms with VPNs, or obfuscating their ages," Yasmin London, Global Online Safety Expert for Qustodio, said.

"But it could really be as simple as they're just accessing these apps because the restrictions aren't working."

The data also showed children increasingly turning to messaging platform WhatsApp, which is not affected by the ban.

Qustodio said the data was gathered by analyzing anonymized monthly social media app usage among Australian children and showed the percentages of kids that had used the app for more than five consecutive minutes at least once in a given month.

Australian officials have said the ban is designed to protect children from online bullying and "predatory algorithms".

A team of Australia-based researchers in a peer-reviewed study published in June found little evidence to suggest teenagers have turned away from social media as a consequence, however.

New Zealand's government also this week said it would introduce legislation that could see firms like Meta fined up to 10 percent of their global revenue if they fail to comply.

Varieties

Drought-Hit Danube Gives Way to Fossil Hunt in Bulgaria

This photograph taken on August 21, 2026, shows unidentified remains found in the dried-out Danube riverbed near the village of Ryahovo, during an organized fossil hunt after a record low water level revealed mammoth bones there at the end of July. (AFP)
This photograph taken on August 21, 2026, shows unidentified remains found in the dried-out Danube riverbed near the village of Ryahovo, during an organized fossil hunt after a record low water level revealed mammoth bones there at the end of July. (AFP)
TT
TT

Drought-Hit Danube Gives Way to Fossil Hunt in Bulgaria

This photograph taken on August 21, 2026, shows unidentified remains found in the dried-out Danube riverbed near the village of Ryahovo, during an organized fossil hunt after a record low water level revealed mammoth bones there at the end of July. (AFP)
This photograph taken on August 21, 2026, shows unidentified remains found in the dried-out Danube riverbed near the village of Ryahovo, during an organized fossil hunt after a record low water level revealed mammoth bones there at the end of July. (AFP)

Volunteers scanned the dried-up bank of the Danube in northern Bulgaria, close to where receding waters laid bare mammoth bones last month, hoping to find more fossilized fragments exposed by Europe's parching drought.

"I've found a tooth!" exclaimed Aleksandar Denkov, a 30-year-old amateur photographer, holding up a yellowish fragment protruding from the sand.

Denkov last week joined some 20 other volunteers, many hoping to find more mammoth fossils during the search organized by the regional history museum of the nearby city of Ruse, around 250 km (155 miles) northeast of Sofia.

Though their hopes were not fulfilled, the group found remains of a mammal -- "probably an aurochs or a European bison," according to the museum -- a horse jawbone in a subfossil state and a cluster of fossilized oysters dating back around 60 to 65 million years.

Europe's drought, exacerbated by human-induced climate change according to experts, has seen major rivers slow to a trickle, causing serious problems for cargo shippers and nuclear plants normally cooled by river water.

But the low waters have also revealed remains and historical artefacts not seen for decades -- or even millennia.

Finds in recent weeks along the Danube, Europe's second-longest river, have included World War II shipwrecks in Austria and Serbia and the remains of two German soldiers and a motorbike in the middle of Budapest.

- 'Close to history' -

Ruse Regional History Museum curator Krasimir Kirov said the museum decided to organize the field day "to teach people how to recognize different finds, show them what they might uncover, and give them safety tips."

"After the mammoth was discovered, I started getting dozens of calls from people telling me about what they'd found," he told AFP.

Last month, a resident of the village of Ryahovo -- some 30 kilometers from Ruse -- spotted by chance what museum specialists then identified as a mammoth jaw bone, fragments of tusks, part of a shoulder blade and a femur.

Announced on social media, the initiative to gather near Ryahovo for a guided search quickly sparked keen interest, with requests already pouring in for the next outing, according to Kirov.

The search began with a few instructions: the volunteers must advance in a line and, if someone spots something, raise a hand so that the whole group stops.

Above all, they must not touch any metal objects, which could be ammunition or explosives.

But the walk had barely begun when the line broke apart: enthusiasm won out over discipline.

"It's a very rare opportunity to feel this close to history," Ekaterina Yordanova, a 34-year-old psychologist, told AFP.

"Seeing the Danube in this state is worrying, but it also gives us the chance to discover new things."

Vladimir Tsvyatkov, a 44-year-old business owner, said he, his wife and their two children mainly came "for the adventure".

Having grown up on the banks of the river, he said he had "never seen the Danube so dried up."

- WWII remnants -

Further upstream in Bulgaria, the low Danube levels have also allowed archaeologists to document the foundations of a bridge, more than two km long, inaugurated under Emperor Constantine I in 328.

And elsewhere along the Danube, World War II weaponry and other remnants have been found.

In central Austria, two wrecks of German warships are protruding from the water.

Damaged in fighting with American tanks in 1945, they were later sunk by their own crews, according to local media.

In Serbia, near Prahovo, the receding river has likewise exposed wrecks of German warships, which were among dozens sunk by their own side in 1944 in an attempt to slow the Soviet Red Army's advance along Europe's second-longest river.

And in Budapest, a motorbike and the remains of two German soldiers were found, according to the German War Graves Commission.

The findings come as vast tracts of many of Europe's largest rivers have fallen to levels never recorded before in the month of July, according to data from European climate observatory Copernicus.

Varieties

Too Small for Fries: Drought Shrinks Belgian Potatoes

This photograph shows small-caliber potatoes growing in a field in the village of Nandrin on August 14, 2026. (AFP)
This photograph shows small-caliber potatoes growing in a field in the village of Nandrin on August 14, 2026. (AFP)
TT
TT

Too Small for Fries: Drought Shrinks Belgian Potatoes

This photograph shows small-caliber potatoes growing in a field in the village of Nandrin on August 14, 2026. (AFP)
This photograph shows small-caliber potatoes growing in a field in the village of Nandrin on August 14, 2026. (AFP)

Mathieu Comijn inspected rows of potatoes in a field of cracked earth and browned leaves, pulling from the ground tubers barely the size of ping-pong balls.

"How do you expect to make fries out of these?" asked the Belgian farmer in frustration, as he uprooted another plant and examined it.

"Normally, they should be at least four times this size," he said.

Like many Belgian farmers this summer, Comijn's harvest in Amay, near the eastern city of Liege, has been hit by a devastating combination of weather extremes.

First, a spate of heavy rain and storms at the end of spring weakened the soil. Then, as elsewhere in Europe, exceptionally hot and dry conditions followed -- blamed by scientists on man-made climate change.

That caused the soil to harden into compact clumps in which potatoes "cannot breathe properly" and struggle to grow, the farmer explained.

"It's a disaster," the 30-year-old told AFP. "I've never seen anything like it."

The problem for Comijn is that all these rows of Bintje potatoes, a prized variety in Belgium, were destined to become long, golden fries -- a beloved staple in a country dotted by "friteries" or "frituren", street stalls specializing in the stuff.

Yet with just a month to go before the harvest, set for around September 20, none are larger than the palm of his hand. The only silver lining is that their flavor has not been spoiled by their diminished size.

- 'Too painful' -

Comijn's father Stephane has been so distressed by the situation that he refused to visit the field for several days.

"It's too painful," said the septuagenarian, wiping his forehead. The former head of the family farm struggles to remember weather this dry in the region -- except, perhaps, during a historic heatwave in 1976.

But good harvest or bad, the Comijn family, who grow 500 hectares (1,236 acres) of potatoes, still have supply contracts to meet.

As the world's top exporter of frozen fries, Belgium applies strict rules to its potato trade.

Before the harvest, growers and processors negotiate both delivery volumes and prices.

To help fulfil part of their commitments, the Comijns will draw on stocks from last year, when the harvest was exceptionally abundant.

"We had started throwing some of them away," Stephane Comijn explained, to make space for this year's crop.

"But now they're worth money," he said, standing in front of a refrigerated warehouse kept at 10C, where mountains of 2025 potatoes remain in storage.

- Supply crunch -

But Stephane Comijn knows using last year's stocks will not be enough.

"We're going to have to use varieties that aren't as good," he lamented. "People at the fry shops complain. You can explain to them that it's because of the drought, but they don't understand."

Bernard Lefevre, the president of the national union of fry vendors, sought to put things into perspective.

"There's always a problem," said Lefevre, who has worked in the sector for a quarter-century.

"Either there are too many potatoes, like last year, and prices collapse, so producers say it's a catastrophe, or it's the opposite extreme.

"And yet, year after year, we manage to get through it."

But with supplies under pressure, fry prices are likely to heat up too -- and for Lefevre, who represents 4,500 fry shops across Belgium, that is no small matter.

"Aside from illness in the royal family, the second worst piece of news a Belgian can hear is that the price of a cone of fries is going up," he told AFP.