I got a free lunch from a private chef.

The catch was that he filmed the entire thing

that trained robots.

When Chef Ali showed up at my apartment,

he was already wearing this baseball hat

with a blocky white camera attached.

And as he made a three-course meal, it recorded every chop

and stir from his point of view.

The company, Shift, has been offering free services in

exchange for permission to record work inside of your home.

It started with house cleaning in New York City,

and now it’s sending private chefs

in the San Francisco apartment.

The footage is called egocentric data.

Chatbots are trained on tech script from the internet,

but robots need first-person video showing them

how human hands actually work.

How to hold a knife, turn up hands, scrub a crusty dish.

As Ali made Gazpacho, salmon, and a tiramasu,

I mostly stood there, remembering

that my cramped kitchen

and regrettably crusty oven were being immortalized

as robot training data.

The company’s CEO thinks affordable home robots

could arrive soon.

And sure, a cheap robot that cooks and cleans sounds great,

but we’re giving AI models physical bodies, hands,

and knives.

A Roomba accidentally smearing dog poop

everywhere is one thing.

A chef bot glitching out

with a blade in its hand is a whole other.

For now, Ali did the cooking, Shift got the data,

and I got the leftover tiramasu.

And somewhere out there, a future robot

got a little bit better at wielding knives.

I sure hope so.