A Bengaluru Barber Is Recording His Hands. Whether Machines Will Do Workers' Jobs Is Unsettled.
Mohammed Ashim has cut hair and trimmed beards in Bengaluru for four years. Recently, the 22-year-old strapped a camera to his head to record his work.
The camera records only his hands and fingers; his clients' faces are blurred out.
The larger question is whether workers are collecting data for machines that will one day do their jobs. Bino Paul, a senior professor at TISS in Mumbai, says it is too early to tell.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The hands-only frame is the detail that stays with me: the client's face is blurred, but the barber's manual skill is exactly what the camera is after.
Blurring the clients' faces keeps them out of the frame; it does not settle what happens to the worker. The open question is whether workers are collecting data for machines that will do their jobs, and a blurred face does not answer it.