Robot labs are paying to film people doing chores and jobs

What happened: The Financial Times says robotics and physical AI startups, which have raised about $48 billion this year per PitchBook, are putting cameras in homes, offices and factories and running robot gyms to capture movement data the open web never recorded. Labs named include Physical Intelligence. One company plans five robot gyms by the end of 2026 and calls real world training data physical AI's scarcest resource. Footage must be labeled frame by frame, and nobody has said what the people filmed are paid.
Austin's take: Austin compares it to Tesla's years of driving footage and to LLMs training on the whole public internet: robots lack that data, so it must be filmed by hand. He has heard of people paid to wear GoPros while cooking or cleaning, expects demand for data to keep growing, flags the moral issue of paying workers to train robots that may replace them, and says he probably would not let a company film his kitchen.
Why it matters: Data, not hardware, is holding robots back, which means everyday work and private spaces are becoming training material.
What to do: If you are offered pay to film your home or job, ask what is captured, how it is used and labeled, and what you are paid before agreeing.
Not confirmed yet: Austin's anecdotes about paid camera wearers and $20 an hour labeling work are secondhand reports.

The Loop