DoorDash Inc. is paying delivery couriers in some markets to submit video clips and complete other digital tasks to help improve artificial intelligence and robotics models, following competitors that have found creative new uses for gig workers in the AI boom.
The delivery company has launched a new app called Tasks for those efforts, listing paid opportunities for activities such as recording an unscripted conversation in Spanish, or filming themselves completing various household chores like loading a dishwasher, handwashing dishes or folding clothes.
The original audio and video footage that workers submit will be used to evaluate in-house AI models as well as those used by partners in the retail, insurance, hospitality and technology sectors, a DoorDash spokesperson told Bloomberg News.
DoorDash is tapping its 8-million-strong contractor workforce in the U.S. to meet an insatiable demand for unique datasets that are sought after by companies needing to train specialized AI models. Uber Technologies Inc. and Instacart have made similar moves in the past year, following in the footsteps of upstarts like Scale AI Inc. in using a network of remote workers to create new data or validate AI outputs.
There will also be new digital tasks listed on the regular DoorDash courier app. Those may include taking pictures of food to populate a restaurant’s digital menu, photographing a hotel entrance to indicate the drop-off location, or scanning supermarket shelves for inventory checks, according to a company blog post on Thursday. DoorDash’s recently launched pilot program with Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, in which drivers get paid to close robotaxi doors, is also part of the new crop of paid gigs.
DoorDash is making the new tasks available to active couriers in select U.S. markets, skipping tightly regulated areas like California, New York City, Seattle and Colorado. It said it intends to expand into more task types and countries over time.
As an example of how the paid video submissions work, instructions for a dishwashing task ask that the person capture footage with a body-worn camera pointed down toward their hands, scrubbing and rinsing at least five dishes and holding each clean dish steady in frame for a few seconds before moving to the next dish. That camera footage may be valuable as robotics firms hone their humanoids’ ability to recognize objects.
The announcements also dovetail with DoorDash’s plans to invest more in growth areas including grocery and retail delivery, new products around AI chatbots and autonomous delivery, as well as internal platform updates.
“These are the kinds of real-world problems we’ve been solving for over a decade, and we realized the same capabilities that helped us could help other businesses too,” said Ethan Beatty, general manager of DoorDash Tasks, in a statement. “The goal of Tasks is to help more businesses understand what’s happening on the ground and gather new insights.”
Lung writes for Bloomberg.
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