I let an AI startup film every inch of my apartment.
That’s a privacy nightmare — and yes, I did suitably hide all my personal items before they arrived. But, as a 23-year-old living in New York on a journalist’s budget, I’m not exactly splurging on house cleaners.
These were free, so long as I agreed to the cameras.
The cleaners came from Shift, a startup that offers free housekeeping across New York. The price is the video recording, which will later be used to train robots. (Shift says it anonymizes “names, faces, or other personal information,” per its website.) It’s part of a bigger trend: startups are paying for videos of household tasks, like folding laundry, to train robots.
When Shift premiered in May, I quickly booked myself a spot. When the cleaners arrived two weeks later, I was nervous. Who were these strangers in my shoebox apartment? I grew even more nervous when they texted me 10 minutes before my appointment time that another staffer — a chef! — would be joining.
Eventually, though, I relaxed. It was free, after all.
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The cleaners came first
When Shift’s cleaners arrived at my apartment, I was hesitant. These were 20-somethings, wearing baggy white polos and suiting up with baseball caps attached to cameras.
The cameras hung off the brim of their caps. While they weren’t walking around with large camcorders, the wires hanging off the cameras were still highly visible.
The cleaners mostly used a mix of their supplies and mine. They took about 90 minutes of the two-hour slot. I was working while they cleaned, and they rarely disrupted me, which I appreciated.
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I wasn’t overly impressed with the cleaning. (When my roommate came home, he asked: Did they even come?) Still, the service was free, and I liked not having to vacuum myself.
Shift surprised me with a three-course meal
About 10 minutes after the cleaners arrived, I heard a knock on the door. Chef James was here.
James wore the same uniform: white polo, baseball cap, wire running up the neck. He set up in my kitchen and asked if I had any allergies or dietary preferences.
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I had no idea what James had come to cook. (I didn’t even know Shift had a chef service!) It turned out that my work lunch would be a three-course meal. James brought the ingredients himself and only used my pans, knives, and plates.
My favorite was the entrée: seared tuna with coriander salt, Meyer lemon, artichokes, sugar snap peas, and asparagus. My least favorite was the appetizer, a cured salmon belly that was vastly overpowered by mustard oil. I saved the dessert, a light cake with whipped cream and strawberries, for later.
The chef service was Shift’s peak. I don’t have anything sensitive in my kitchen, so I didn’t have to worry about him filming, say, a passport. And who doesn’t love free food?
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My final takeaways
About thirty minutes into the cleaning, I got used to the wires and baseball caps milling around my apartment.
I’ll be interested to see whether these free robot-training services are sustainable. The costs of my session were likely high for Shift: three workers, cleaning supplies, and food. I’m hesitant to believe that a video of my apartment is worth that much.
The demand is certainly there: Shift filled its slots quickly and was similarly booked up when I checked a week later. I get why.
After they left, I enjoyed my semi-clean apartment and my leftovers. And I prayed that I didn’t have any IDs or credit cards lying around that would get accidentally ingested by the AI machines as they tried to learn how to cook and clean like humans.
