Dirty, D1 of 5Ds: Where AI Should Boldly Step Forward
Jinsook Han
From Ideas to Capturing Value | Strategy, M&A and Technology | Alum: McKinsey, AIG, Accenture, PwC
There are some jobs that must be done, but given the working conditions or the nature of the tasks, ideally a small number of humans would do the work. In addition to being very hard, these types of jobs are tedious and often, compensation does not commensurate to the task at hand either. I am referring to the so-called 3D: dirty, dangerous and difficult (also referred to as demeaning or degrading[1] ).
The 3D job nomenclature was derived from the Asian concept of certain blue-collar jobs. For the origin of 3D word and more, see these articles[2] . These 3D jobs typically pay minimum wage, and tend to employ a large share of migrant workers. I believe 3D should be updated to 5Ds and include “disturbing” and “dependent.” The 4th D, “disturbing” means jobs that are mentally taxing, e.g., content moderators. By “dependent”, the 5th D, I am referring to jobs that provide care for someone who has become incapacitated partially or permanently to perform daily, routine activities.
From dishwashers to fire fighters, there are countless jobs that fall in 5D. By now, some readers might say, “Clearly you haven’t seen me take care of my X [fill in the person’s name]’s [room, laundry… insert your item or place here] and how filthy, disturbing to see what [censored words] X has. It’s degrading that I am doing this. If you heard X speak to me, you’d agree that it’s a dangerous situation. And I’m stuck with X [forever...or whatever timeframe you consider longer than desired]!” Another reader might add, “Come and sit next to my team. Even via Zoom, I can feel the danger of dark fume which is affecting my health. There should be hazard pay for doing what I do. It’s disturbing to listen to them talk.” Our roles, whether as a family member or a worker, at times involve doing tasks that may definitely fall under the 5D category. However, still that’s not the whole job, day after day. But I digress.
The original 3D nomenclature was applied to jobs that had, to varying degrees, yet all elements of dirty, dangerous and difficult. By 5D though, I am expanding the definition to include those jobs that particularly have high elements of D, even if not all 3 or 5 of “D’ness” might apply. So, let’s start with the first D dirty, whether filthiness or contamination.
There are five million[3] sanitation workers in India alone. New York City, supposedly the largest sanitation department in the world, has about 8,000 garbage collectors[4] . According to the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, it was also the sixth most dangerous job in 2020, by fatal work injury rates, 10 times higher than average of all workers[5] , the standing it had endured even before the the arrival of coronavirus. While the count of workers and process of sanitation work are debatable and are not consistently applied nor tracked, there are roughly ten million sanitation workers in the world. Sanitation workers are people responsible for cleaning, maintaining, operating or emptying the waste, equipment or technology at any step of the sanitation value chain. They haul trash, clean garbage, remediate and manages sewers and public toilets, emptying pits and septic tanks, manholes, operate pumping stations and treatment plants. They are also the manual scavengers who manually remove human waste from latrines.[6]
Poor sanitation is the cause of death for 430,000 people, not fully counting death of sanitation workers due to animals – think rats, snakes in sewage, toxicity from methane, accidents from falls and vehicles including the sanitation trucks themselves.
The UN declared clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene to everywhere by 2030 as part of Sustainable Development goal 6, Target 6.2 (“safely managed sanitation for all”). Lots of activities have been happening already.
Latrines. Since its announcement in 2011, the Gates Foundation has been running the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge and in 2018, Bill Gates even held up a beaker of human feces at the podium. See GatesNotes[7] for the winners of this Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. In case you are wondering the size of the market, it’s over 4 billion people who currently use latrines that can be unpleasant and unhygienic or lack sanitation provisions entirely. The Tiger Toilet, also known as vermifilter toilet, that uses tiger worms (yes actual worms, not a code word) to breakdown the fecal solids, has those 4 billion people in mind, and it has the USAID’s stage 1 investment, and it has been running at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, UK[8] .
Robots. In sorting compost, recycling, and landfill, far from being household names and more of novelty still, but we do hear of many and progress is being made: Alphabet’s Everyday Robots, AMP Robotics, Oscar by Intuitive AI, RoCycle at MIT CSAIL and Yale University, TrashBot by CleanRobotics to name a few. At the enterprise level, Waste Robotics, Max-AI series from BHS (Bulk Handling Systems) are examples of the industrial grade tech in material recovery facilities that employ both multi-layered neural networks and a vision system. The Max-AIs were even cheekily named Employees of the Year.
On the scavenger and actual cleaning worker side though, there was Bandicoot by Genrobotics[9] , supposedly the first sanitation, scavenger robot then there are some window cleaning bots here and there. Call them out when you spot them. I am still scavenging to find some more and need help.
Other Hardware. New York Department of Sanitation ran Better Bin project – design the new trash and recycling bins and “Trucks for Art.” to bring design ideas for over 23,000 bins and two thousand collection trucks in the city. Electric collection trucks are also coming. Do we need a completely different hardware for collection and also chips for AI and robotics? Perhaps. ?
If you have cool ideas for latrines, don’t be in despair about the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge winners. Gates announced he’s willing to invest $400M more even a few years after the winners were announced, and I think he still might have some change left over to fund your idea and scale your product if merited.
Want to look and maybe help with some data and analysis, maybe help design better, bins, collection trucks, Bandicoot X.0? For starter data on sanitation, check out The World Bank[10] , UNICEF[11] , the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP)[12] for WASH (Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene), and WASHNote[13] .
Feel like understanding the industry first and see if there are other problems that you could help as a citizen in your local communities? Sanitation is an industry that has many controversies from commercial and private garbage collection to overtime pay that has skyrocketed to select people during covid-19, not necessarily for the garbage collection workers. Thousands fell ill during the pandemic since these universally classified essential workers kept working as garbage increased with more people staying home. Look around the sanitation department information in your local city and country.
Worldwide investment into AI companies was $77.5 billion in 2021. A big number but likely still understated. The previous record was the year before, 2020 with $36 billion[14] . Blockbuster funding rounds seem to be steady headlines in the investment communities. Sustainability is rightly in the vogue. We need increasing share of investments be directed towards shifting the work of 5D to AI and robots - with human oversight - from humans.
Approximately 30,000 sanitation worker jobs were open in the month of February in the US alone. It would not be a bad idea for AI and robots to march in to help reduce that number. I rather read about higher income and machine repair rates than worker fatality rates and extended overtime, as the working environment becomes safer and more dignified. ???
What is happening with sanitation in your neck of the woods? Comment here or write to me at [email protected]
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[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Department_of_Sanitation | https://www1.nyc.ov/assets/dsny/site/about
[6] https://www.who.it/news/item/14-11-2019-new-report-exposes-horror-of-working-conditions-for-millions-of-sanitation-workers-in-the-developing-world
[14] https://venturebeat.com/2021/12/06/report-ai-investments-see-largest-year-over-year-growth-in-20-years/