Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

I want Rosie (fictional robot from the TV show "The Jetsons")

Basically, I want a robotic butler / maid that will do most of the cleanup around the house.

Unfortunately, the only robots available will be connected to the cloud, paid by subscription, and will gather a continuous feed of audio-video data from you and your home. And sometimes it will be teleoperated, and you might not know when.

I'd rather do my own cleanup, personally.

Cloud connected (robot AI in cloud) home robots would be very unsafe, due to network slowdown/outages. Imagine it freezing/stopping right after it turns on water faucet or stovetop.

I bet China will race to the bottom with cheap versions. 3D printers and LLMs, next home robots

Why would consumers settle for that? Local models have scaled quite quickly. Just pair the bot with a LAN server as the brain that keeps all your data private.

Barring that, choose bots that use Zero Knowledge Proof architectures for all data so you know there's no in/out of personal data, only security proofs. This makes rental robots certifiably private too.

They've settled for that in:

* Phones * Cars * Robotic Vacuums * Kitchen Appliances * Televisions * Home Lighting * Home security systems, doorbells, and locks * Web browsers * Operating Systems

So, uh, yeah, I'm pretty confident users will settle for that in robots too.

Some of them will be paid by subscription and have ads

Haha! Instead, you’ll get a robot that will make you art, music, and tell you stories and you get to toil away cleaning the house.

“Sure I’ll clean up the house, Mr. J. While I’m doing, so have you seen the new shoes from crocs? They’re sponsored by the Jenners and have great new designs with all of your favorite movie characters on them! Would you like me to order you a pair?”

The first voice accessed (in my brain) by this dialog was Harley Quinn, it took a moment for it to fall back to Rosie.

“Hey Mr J for a low 7.99 a month I can unlock the Harley Quinn voice pack! For 39.99 we can upgrade you to unlock TikTok Rosie dance mode with special Harley Fortnite dance, a joker LCD breastplate for me and special “psycho partner” romance mode. What so you say, Mr J?”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com