I Tested DoorDash’s Task App and Witnessed the Dismal Outlook for AI Gig Employment

The flash from my iPhone camera lights up my unclean socks and underwear as I raise each piece for the video to capture. While I stuff my odorous laundry into the washer, I feel a bit jittery with every loud beep of the phone, indicating my hands might be out of frame. Gotta get those fingers in view! No, I haven’t switched to creating some sort of fetish content to pay the bills—I’m testing out the new gig economy app from DoorDash, called Tasks.

The newly launched Tasks app by DoorDash isn’t about food delivery—it’s focused on collecting training data from people like you for enhancing generative AI models and humanoid robots. “This data assists AI and robotics in comprehending the physical world,” states DoorDash’s press announcement. “Payment is presented upfront and is based on the task’s effort and complexity.” Many of the gigs require you to secure a smartphone to your chest and film your hands executing specific actions.

Such video data can aid AI developers and robotics engineers to enhance their systems. For instance, having thousands of videos of individuals folding laundry with visible hands can teach robots to perform the same task using computer vision technology.

Photograph: Reece Rogers

DoorDash intends to broaden this service to encompass a wider variety of tasks and users in the future. The app’s availability at launch in the US is unclear—specifically, users from California, New York City, Seattle, and Colorado are explicitly restricted from using Tasks. (I was able to access the Tasks app and complete gigs while living in Kansas.)

Eager to discover the types of tasks available, I registered as a “dasher” and downloaded the Tasks app. After logging in, my initial task was to film myself moving three objects across a table. Simple enough! I activated the camera and relocated my coffee cup, pen, and laptop from one side of the desk to the other. My reward? Not cash—DoorDash sent me a free body mount for my smartphone camera afterwards, enabling me to tackle more gigs within the app.

Following that brief onboarding experience, I gained access to the complete list of potential jobs and was ready to start earning some cash. The gigs currently offered in the Tasks app are primarily categorized into five main areas: household chores, handiwork projects, food preparation, location navigation, and foreign language conversations.

The tasks in these categories are quite diverse. The chore list includes making beds, loading a dishwasher, repotting plants, and taking out the trash. Handiwork tasks range from changing lightbulbs to more challenging projects like pouring concrete. Cooking-related gigs mainly focus on eggs: frying, poaching, and scrambling. Navigation gigs may include exploring a museum or walking around an apartment complex. For language-based tasks, the app seeks “natural conversations” in languages like Russian and Mandarin Chinese, among others.