DoorDash Inc. is paying couriers in some markets to submit video clips and perform other digital tasks to help improve artificial intelligence and robotics models, following competitors who have found creative new uses for gig workers in the AI boom.
The delivery company has launched a new app called Tasks for these efforts, which lists paid options for activities like recording an unscripted conversation in Spanish, or filming themselves doing various household chores like loading a dishwasher, hand washing dishes, or folding clothes.
The original audio and video footage that employees submit will be used to evaluate internal AI models, as well as those of partners in the retail, insurance, hospitality and technology sectors, a DoorDash spokesperson told Bloomberg News.
DoorDash leverages its 8 million U.S. contractors to meet the insatiable demand for unique data sets sought by companies that need to train specialized AI models. Uber Technologies Inc. and Instacart have made similar moves in the past year, following in the footsteps of startups like Scale AI Inc. by using a network of remote workers to create new data or validate AI outputs.
There will also be new digital tasks listed in the regular DoorDash courier app. This includes taking photos of food to populate a restaurant’s digital menu, photographing a hotel entrance to indicate the delivery location, or scanning grocery store shelves for inventory checks, according to a company blog post Thursday. DoorDash’s recently launched pilot program with Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, which pays drivers to close robotaxi doors, is also part of the new slate 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 plans to expand to more job types and countries over time.
As an example of how the paid video submissions work, the instructions for a dishwashing task call for the person to capture footage with a body-worn camera pointed down at their hands, scrubbing and rinsing at least five dishes and holding each clean dish still on screen for a few seconds before moving on to the next dish. That camera footage could be valuable as robotics companies hone their humanoids’ ability to recognize objects.
The announcements also align 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 more than a decade, and we realized that the same capabilities that helped us could help other businesses,” Ethan Beatty, general manager of DoorDash Tasks, said in a statement. “The goal of Tasks is to help more companies understand what is happening in practice and gather new insights.”
Lung writes for Bloomberg.
