The True Cost of a Free Apartment Clean in New York

A New York startup named Micro AGI has introduced a project called Shift, which offers free apartment cleaning to local residents. However, this seemingly generous service comes with a major catch, as every part of the customer's home is recorded. The cleaners, who are typically young college graduates, wear small cameras on their caps that are connected to their mobile phones.

The project is designed to collect data for training the next generation of autonomous cooking and cleaning robots. According to the company's founder, Bercan Kilic, robots must be trained to adapt to different layouts and changing lighting conditions. He noted that while language models can easily learn from text, physical robots require millions of real-world examples to master tasks. If the startup gathered enough data, it would sell the anonymised files to various robotics and artificial intelligence firms. The company has also expanded its data collection to Turkey, where mechanics are hired to record themselves repairing cars.

Despite the popularity of the free cleans, privacy advocates have urged consumers to be extremely cautious about this arrangement. Rory Mir, a director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, warned that these pay-for-privacy practices could ultimately lead to surveillance pricing. He explained that even if consumers trusted the initial business, their private information could be shared with other corporations or governments. Calli Schroeder, who works at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, described the initiative as a creative way to sell privacy invasion. She added that sharing this intimate information might build systems that do not have the public's best interests at heart. Nevertheless, because demand remains incredibly high, the startup's cleaners are currently working full-time across the Upper East Side.