The gig workers who are training humanoid robots at home by Michelle Kim

Investors are pouring money feverishly into solving this challenge, spending over $6 billion on humanoid robots in 2025. And at-home data recording is becoming a booming gig economy around the world. Data companies like Scale AI and Encord are recruiting their own armies of data recorders, while DoorDash pays delivery drivers to film themselves doing chores. And in China, workers in dozens of state-owned robot training centers wear virtual-reality headsets and exoskeletons to teach humanoid robots how to open a microwave and wipe down the table.

Humanoid robots are Meta’s next ‘AR-size bet’ by Alex Heath

He said that Meta’s new Superintelligence AI lab is collaborating with the robotics group to build a “world model” that can “do the software simulation required to animate a dexterous hand.” (Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis has also talked frequently about his goal of building a world model that brings spatial awareness to AI.) The “sensor loop doesn’t exist” for a humanoid to be able to gingerly fetch a set of keys out of a jeans pocket like a human could, Bosworth explained. “So you have to build that data set.”

But why?