India’s emergence as a supplier of human-generated data for artificial intelligence presents an economic opportunity, but also a familiar danger: the country may provide the labour while others capture the technology, intellectual property and profits. As robots move beyond factory floors into homes and workplaces, they must learn skills that humans acquire through experience. Cutting fabric, handling fragile objects and operating tools require movements and judgements that cannot be taught through written instructions alone. Recordings of people performing these tasks are becoming valuable inputs in the development of physical AI.

For workers struggling with insecure incomes, being paid to record activities they already perform offers a welcome supplement. But the larger economic question is who captures the value created. Workers contribute their time and practical skills; intermediaries process the recordings; technology companies use the resulting datasets to develop robotic capabilities. Although no individual recording guarantees a profitable innovation, the potential disparity between workers’ earnings and downstream commercial returns raises legitimate concerns about........

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