Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots | Hacker News Reader

Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

theverge.com

191 pointsevilsimon259 comments

Looks to me like they want to get in on 3D mapping homes that haven't already been mapped by a Roomba or other similar bot. There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police. At the same time the customer's home is being cleaned, all objects can be scanned to data-mine the customer's shopping preferences.

Maybe training AI and bots is part of what they're trying to accomplish, but I just can't help wonder what else they are trying to do. I am extremely suspicious of any tech companies that make it seem like a great idea to let their tech in my house.

I can't imagine what is going to happen when, if this company ever really develops cleaning bots, their bots misidentify something as a weapon or drug stash and automatically dial the police. Or one of their bots gets remotely hacked by a vengeful person who then triggers the bot to call in a SWAT team.

Also, if this kind of labor is the "unskilled" labor that we've all heard of (or have been told is "unskilled"), AI systems shouldn't need any training for it ;)

This sounds like a decent deal for the segment of customers who are happy to have their shopping preferences mapped (which seems to be almost all) and don’t care if a 3rd party has their home layout.

My home layout was approved by the local council, and is freely available for anyone to see. I get personal belongings, but who cares about home layout?

You are conflicting room layout to home layout. In genreal, blueprints or something similar are available. Where your bed, sofa, and tables are located isn't.

"Abort! Abort! The bastard is painting. He's moved the sofa."

Haha, yeah. Exactly my thoughts.

Yeah, definitely. On one hand it's obvious such companies will want this data precisely to make their systems work. On the other hand... once they have the data, we all know it also ends up wherever someone is willing to pay for it. Even if they say it's not the goal today... 10 years from now how do you know the owner of the data at that point will feel the same way? Doubly so since they don't seem to be making any privacy guarantees around the pricing, just attempts at anonymizing the high level things.

I find it interesting how many people get worked up about the "skilled/unskilled" terminology though. Just walking to arbitrary waypoints is an extraordinary feet in itself - if you dropped me in the past and told me to build something which walks (or even just traverses) as such I would likely not achieve it in my lifetime, despite having great insight into how we've already accomplished this goal. At the same time, people know listing "mastered the ability to walk as a child, proficient in running" in the skills section of their resume does not make sense. It seems easy enough to understand the difference in meaning between the two contexts (skills an average human is expected to have over, say, a rock vs skills which differentiate one as able to start a job without waiting for several years of additional development) rather than seek to pick the least relevant interpretation.

OTOH, there are definitely jobs which get conflated as having a low barrier to entry (for the average person) but actually take many years of training to be able to get a typical job in (and not just for the "high end" version of the job). That's definitely a misclassification, but not for something like cleaning homes where the average person is expected to be able to do it themselves.

> OTOH, there are definitely jobs which get conflated as having a low barrier to entry (for the average person) but actually take many years of training to be able to get a typical job in

Isn't the barrier to entry due to the jobs not allowing for mistakes? Cleaning has a high tolerance for mistakes (e.g. missing bits, leaving streaks on windows etc) and so it's fine for an inexperienced cleaner to learn from their mistakes whilst doing the job. However, people would not be happy for a lawyer or surgeon to be learning from their mistakes whilst working - they are expected to already be competent and mistakes are generally very damaging.

Yeah, I'd say a job "does not allow for many mistakes" and "requires skill in the labor" are two ways of saying the same thing. If it's alright to do the job completely wrong most of the time and it still make sense to be hired then the base position in that job does not have a skills requirement.

>> Just walking to arbitrary waypoints is an extraordinary feet in itself - if you dropped me in the past and told me to build something which walks (or even just traverses) as such I would likely not achieve it in my lifetime,

Sorry, I'm confused. Are you talking about bipedal robot walking specifically or path planning in general? The latter is a long-solved problem, right? And I'm sure bipedal walking was also basically solved in the 1980's.

> And I'm sure bipedal walking was also basically solved in the 1980's.

It isn't even efficiently solved now, in the general case. Bipedal walking on approximately flat surfaces with minimal geometry constraints is basically solved, but complex terrain and/or constraints on foot placement require slower methods that wouldn't really be considered "solved".

That's right, environment conditions play a huge role and modulate efficacy to a great degree. And the same applies to pathfinding with osbstacle avoidance otherwise we'd all have our robot maids and self-driving cars already.

But we have the theory down pat, is what I was trying to say. There's a lot of engineering still that remains to do, but e.g. Dijkstra's algorithm... works.

I had a longer comment in place of the one I made above, that tried to caveat this a bit more. I also linked to this survey:

A Comprehensive Survey of Path Planning Algorithms for Autonomous Systems and Mobile Robots: Traditional and Modern Approaches

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259012302...

That's just one review, there's more. The striking thing is that there are so many approaches for robotics path planning. That means a) it's a problem for which many solutions are known but b) there's not one dominant approach. One reason for that is what you point out, that it doesn't always work that well.

And that's just path planning, i.e. figuring out where to walk. Gait is a whole other ball game, figuring out how to get there.

The reality of robotics is that the existence of the theory often means little about practical feasibility. I have myself joked about problems being solved in the '80s, but the joke is really something closer to "all of the interesting problems in planning and control were solved in the' 80s and known to be intractable", because the theoretical complexity is just prohibitive.

The last 40 or so years haven't really moved the needle on theoretical complexity, but we have developed new methods and improved existing methods (and also computers have gotten massively better) such that a much larger subset of the problem space is actually practically solvable. Even still, it is almost trivially easy to go from a practically-solvable problem to a practically-unsolvable one, and much of the confusion that exists in the popular understanding of robot capabilities is the result of the solvable/unsolvable line being so close and subtle.

On the topic of bipedal (and quadrupedal) locomotion, I think you could actually argue that we very much do not understand how to solve the problem, and exhibit #1 is that basically everyone (Boston Dynamics included) is giving up on MPC-based control and adopting RL-based controllers which seem to work better but are much less comprehensible from a theory standpoint.

I think the move to RL-based controllers is just the latest trend tbh. There's papers to be written, so they will be written. I can't say I have seen a huge improvement in performance and they suffer from really poor generalisation certainly compared to planning and MPC.

I agree with your comment- the planning problem is in PSPACE and while there are techniques like relaxations and width-based search that allow large portions of it to be solved there are areas that remain intractable (although I'm not sure about width-based search; I haven't really tried it). But we have to distinguish between different kinds of task.

Robot navigation is a broad field, but just going from point A to point B is really hard to see as an open problem. You stick a PID controller on a robot and set some waypoints and it will happily roll, float or fly between them. Or, like I say, just do A* or Dijkstra's. Problems begin if there is anything between A and B. If it's a solid, immovable object, then that's OK. If it moves, things start to get tough. If you want a big chunk of metal moving safely in a dynamic environment full of independent agents that also go about their goals... good luck with that. Terrain, weather, visibility etc just add variables to the problem and that's bad, variables are bad, we don't want variables.

So when I said "solved" above I was really talking about "walking between arbitrary waypoints" as per the OP's turn of phrase. I might have played a bit fast and loose with "arbitrary" because obviously if one waypoint is in a tornado and the other in a volcano... But navigating between waypoints is a solved problem. It's what you do while you navigate between waypoints that's the open problem [1].

Bipedal (and quadrupedal) walking is similar but that's more robotics and less planning and so I know less about it. Still, Asimo could almost walk up a flight of stairs on its own in the '80s. Again, if you assume nice, clean, flat laboratory conditions, we know how to get a legged robot to walk. I know, I've played around with NAO and a tiny robot dog from Hiwonder. They can walk around, dance, get up on their own, shake your hand, play with a ball etc. How cute. Then of course there's all the kung-fu fighting, somersaulting, cartwheeling etc robots doing the rounds on social media. But again the problems begin as soon as you want those kinds of system to do something useful in the real world, where they need to physically interact with solid objects and moving obstacles.

So what I'd say to hedge a bit on what I commented above is that basic path planning and bipedal gaits are solved but those turn out to be only part of the problem of robotic autonomy which is itself still wide open [2].

Which is a good thing. We gotta have something to work on.

_______________________

[1] Of course, sometimes all you need to do is go boom at the far waypoint. I think sometimes people forget we have very effective autonomous navigation systems: specifically, self-guided missiles. When it's fine for a system to destroy itself when it reaches its target and causing maximum damage is a bonus, that simplifies a hell of a lot of stuff that can't be taken for granted with, e.g., self-driving cars. But, at the end of the day, a self-guided missile is exactly a system that goes from point A to point B autonomously. Fire and forget, that sort of thing.

[2] And when I say "bipedal gait is solved" I'm no saying I like the solution. I'm still smarting that my Passive Dynamic Walking project didn't get funded.

Yes, it's long accomplished in the modern world - but try building it in the 1880s instead of the 1980s. Same total complexity, but now we consider it complex/extremely skilled because it's well out of grasp of the average person. When we apply walking to our physical selves, we don't consider it at all unique (even though it's still just as insane a problem).

Ah, OK, when you said "the past" I assumed more modern times, 20th century. But yeah, in the 1880s all those were hard problems with no obvious solutions, yet.

I agree also that we take walking too much for granted. And while bipedal walking is "solved" for robotics today, it doesn't work the same way that bipedal walking works in humans or other animals, people had to find very ... specific solutions that were guided more by the technology already available. For example I always thought Passive Dynamic Walking would have to catch on as a better, more human-like, bipedal walking technology but it never really panned out.

So now we have weird, expensive, forceful, dynamic walking. But at least it works.

There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police

Is there?

Came here to post exactly this. Is there, really?

I would guess so, they seem interested in the ring cameras https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/09/30/ring-police-partn...

The cost of sharing recordings of video you collect anyway is near 0, and this provides videos of public places.

What's the value of a recording inside my house to the police? That requires paying a human to go around recording it?

The cost of sharing recordings of video you collect anyway is near 0. If not police, many stalkers would definitely appreciate this information.

Even if my neighborhood is a public place, I don't agree that most public places should have 24hr video surveillance.

They'd save money if they knew exactly which spot of the wall to shoot through to kill the innocent sleeping person next door, that's at least a few dollars a week in bullets alone.

I can totally imagine the sales pitch to police departments: before you bust down the door of the local journalist who criticized you, look up their home floor plan and review 360 camera footage of each room, so you can get to their laptop before it locks when your surveillance team detects they’ve stepped away to use the bathroom.

Ignoring the OTT scenario premise; if the surveillance team is able to detect movement like that then the surveillance team already knows where the laptop is. Why would you need a floor plan?

If you were just using something kind of remote sensing technology to determine where people were in the building, but you didn’t know the layout, you couldn’t be sure. I’ve seen examples of using WiFi or other radio frequencies to spatially locate people through walls, but it doesn’t let you actually see what’s there.

So if you combine their position in the building with separately collected layout information about the building, you can better infer their activity.

Presumably the surveillance team, and all the police about to bust down the door, are at locus in person? They already know the floor plan, occupants present, and there locations. No need to infer anything because they're under surveillance...

yeah the parent was a rather dumb comment. police don't buy intelligence on the population en mass. how could they afford it snd how could they use it without probable cause? if you are already a target of an investigation they can get a warrant for free with due process.

one paragraph in the three mile long TOS the homeowner clicks OK on and problem solved ?

yeah i was replying to the comment that selling intelligence on private citizens to police would be a revenue driver. not that it couldn't be done, just that it would not make significant money. the median critical thinking level on HN has imploded over the past year.

rofl

I assume you are being tongue-in-cheek, but too subtle

on further reflection, probably not. I have to remember how much home data is already publicly available (as others have noted).

If the service is free, the product is you.

The Stasi would blush

Insurance companies too. They were one of the first ones to map out in detail building plans for entire cities.

> There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police.

Perhaps more to thieves who can make sure they break into a place worth raiding.

No reason to reprhase-and-repeat.

>There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police.

The police basically already have this in the form of building records. Unless you live in a really old building or you've made unapproved modifications, they've got an accurate layout if they care to look.

There's nuance, though. You're right in that they can get a general layout of the rooms in the home, but a mapped layout from a device like this gives them a lot more detailed information - where large objects are that potential targets could hide behind, or stash things.

One data point offers a drawing of where the walls are, another paints a picture of where everything the occupant owns is sitting.

There is some nuance, but in real life the SWAT teams will just crash a bearcat through the wall and fly a cheap drone through the hole to scope out the situation if need be. And as for searching, they don't need a scan to know how to upend everything in a house. People aren't robots, once they're inside, they have their own situational awareness.

The real privacy nightmare with this data to me is marketers mining it for what you have or don't have in your home and hyper targeting you that you need to buy a new coffee table or whatever.

> ... fly a cheap drone through the hole...

Until someone inside shoots it. Much easier to just grab data from yesterday's cleaning. But perhaps I'm overthinking that? I do tend to lean into the idea that SWAT seem to be more of the Leroy Jenkins, times-up-let's-do-this, smash-and-grab types.

> The real privacy nightmare with this data to me...

Oh absolutely, totally agree there.

Better this than the Bot Company, which has been apparently renting out AirBnBs for robot testing and leaving them trashed: https://sfstandard.com/2026/05/28/sf-startup-secretly-testin...

I mean is it? At least the AirBnB owner has some recourse, any attempt to fight exploitation from “free services” goes nowhere

The article specifically mentions at least one property owner who has been denied any recourse because of the lack of before/after photos (presumably before that specific rental).

How do you rent out your place and don’t take any photos before?

I’m sure Airbnb operators get comfortable turning it over every few days without having to constantly take photos. Most guests don’t bring robots in to smash up the dishwasher and dent the walls

Sure but taking a photo of everything in its “good” state seems reasonable. You don’t need to constantly update the photos if nothing gets smashed.

We don’t really know the details. Perhaps they had “good state” photos that were rejected by Airbnb for not being recent enough.

It's easy to say that as someone who doesn't actually rent out their property regularly on airbnb.

Discussion on that one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317093

After thinking about this for a while, I'm not sure it really happened. It wouldn't surprise me if the house was not trashed, just a landlord manipulating evidence when they think they can make money in court. There is no particular reason to trust either side and we have not seen what evidence really exists. In particular the reporters didn't do a good job of digging in - at the very least where is the response from the Bot Company?

Who needs occam's razor when you've got a mobieus shaped breadknife?

That made me lol.

Could be a greedy landlord, but they did turn off his security cameras, so I'm giving him the benefit of doubt for now.

Security cameras inside an apartment for rent, what is essentially a hotel room? Is this common?

Nothing in the article says the cameras are inside.

Sadly, yes: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/how-to-...

I don't entirely doubt the landlord but the bizzarre part is the landlord showing up to take their trash and then somehow finding bundles of wires inside the unit. Why would an airbnb host enter the unit to take trash?

"Why would an airbnb host enter the unit to take trash?"

Not every airbnb host has a professional cleaning staff, and some of those who do may sometimes wish to check the status of their property. I don't find anything strange, let alone "bizarre".

Mid visit though?

Does the un-regulation cut both ways? A landlord usually needs to notify tenants 24hr in advance if they're going to enter the property. Does an AirBnB host need to follow any similar rules? It's not like the renters have a lease, it's not their residence.. Do they have any rights to privacy or notice at all?

That’s part of the process of resetting a property for the next reservation. It’s not bizarre, it’s literally what Airbnb landlords do (or sometimes hire other people to do, but that lowers margins)

They said they saw the wires through the window. Presumably they didn't enter the unit.

I read that the host took the trash, which was outside the house, and through the window he saw the cables and the man with the laptop.

> The Bot Company did not respond to requests for comment

A company operating above board would be sure to carefully document the state of the rental before and after whatever work they were doing. Any tradesperson/installer/technician/repair person will have tales of how they were accused of stealing grandmas wedding ring from the bottom of the sock drawer while repairing a leak in the kitchen.

So either Bot Company damaged property and is trying to pretend they didn't. Or they are incompetent and failed to document the state of the property or handle the owners complaints appropriately.

Given that their training robots and would therefore be collecting as much data as possible, including camera data, I'm leaning towards malice instead of ignorance.

At least the AirBnB owners got paid to have their homes mutalated by robots

If they’re suing, that seems to be insufficient.

Among other issues, it likely causes knock-on problems for tomorrow’s reservations.

Move fast, break things

Like your favorite lamp.

Isn't Airbnb 99% commercial nowadays? Who would leave their fav lamp in there?

Most airbnbs have completely uninspired interior decoration but I had a great one that I'll always remember for having really unique lighting (lots of layers and textures)

Yes, nobody ever actually lives in them, they're just 24/7 airbnbs with a cleaning service.

I want this as a setting in my future cleaning robots.

Seems like there is some synergy to be found here!

Good cop, bad cop

Errr, good bot, bad bot!

We need a captcha that differentiates between the two. I want to allow only good bots in my home.

Actually shift should just partner with Airbnb. Airbnb takes out the cleaning fee from the app, customers benefit, owners get a free cleaning service, Airbnb wins, Shift wins. And if Airbnb invests in Shift, even better.

> Airbnb takes out the cleaning fee from the app

Why would they do that?

Airbnb should invest in Shift, continue to encourage exorbitant cleaning fees, and subsidize discounts for hosts so that they're incentivized to fire their current housekeeping providers and switch to Shift.

The fact that they're not partnering with Airbnb tells us what we need to know. The top of this thread is more likely now: they're interested in surveilling the people, not the buildings.

More like the tech doesn't work or scale (yet).

I think I’m happy for some privacy abuse oriented startup and an Airbnb landlord screwing each other. It seems like a good thing for the world.

I've always found the idea of letting strangers clean my home strange. Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket.

I see cleaning your own home, as well as other chores (dishes, laundry) as an act of self-hygiene. If you want a robot to do your chores, that gives me the same feeling as desiring a robot to bathe you, wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet, brush your teeth for you etc.

Of course these are not apples to oranges, but I can't shake the feeling that you lose something about being a living, breathing being when you give up these mundane chores.

In general once or twice a month cleaners aren't hired to "tidy up", they deep clean.

a bit like the difference of brushing your teeth and going to a hygienist.

I think the point still stands for the type of nerd on HN.

Deep cleaning isn't that hard and, for now, it's relatively inexpensive. There are still only a handful of products where price gouging has occurred due to influencer marketing.

All that needs to happen is another "Tide Pods" type of incident for Amazon to ban commercial cleaning supplies or anything with an SDS. Of course we make the robots do dirty work in this future, and boom you've got another form of surveillance threatening the 4th amendment.

"What's the matter bro? Tryin' to clean up a murder scene or what? huh huh huh"

Housekeeper. House Cleaner.

The first organizes things and may do the laundry or put away groceries or something. I wouldn't know for certain, as my income doesn't yet reach to those heady heights.

The second vacuums, mops, cleans bathrooms, etc.

But, to have a House Cleaner, you must do the Housekeeping.

House Cleaner is not going to vacuum around your piles of dirty laundry.

Some will, but the levels of disrespect required toward one’s employee - and oneself - required, is quite high.

Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket.

I knew a middle-aged waitress who had a cleaning woman come in every week or two.

After being on her feet for 10 hours dealing with jerks in a diner six days a week, she was too tired to do more than basic cleaning. The price was well worth it to her.

The real question isn't how much money you have when in the middle class, it is what will you give up. I have hired cleaners and I love the time savings, but it isn't worth it to me so I almost never do.

>If you want a robot to do your chores

you mean like a dishwasher or a washing machine?

You are confusing letting a machine make decisions about what needs to be done with using a machine to remove toil from the things I have decided.

I'm sure when these came out someone was thinking that they think about what stains to remove.

I guess I am mostly intrigued that those lists would differ greatly with respect to cleaning.

No? The only different between these robots and a washing machine is that in theory, the robot is generalist and can do many tasks, whereas a washing or laundry machine can only do one task. You can still in theory fully control what task the robot works on. Also, in theory, the robot would be the glue between all the other machines, like filling up the washing machine, then moving it to the dryer, etc. It deciding what to do isn't a "prerequisite" for the robot.

I don't think it's a tax bracket thing, or even necessarily a culture/upbringing thing --> I was brought up white-collar working middle class -ish (Eastern European middle-class, which probably doesn't map cleanly to North American middle class; buying a bottle of coke was a Birthday thing), but then was refugee from a civil war for a while, with the appropriate tax bracket. And my grandma certainly instilled much of the same sense in me :)

Thing is, today, as an adult, I'm painfully aware that I'm mortal and life is limited and time is the most precious resource available to me. I'm not religious so I don't believe in after-life reward for being a good boy either. So I'm a little bit more mindful / little less self-flagellating, than I used to be, about these things.

For myself in particular:

* Yes, I shower and wipe my own bottom :)

* I am the dishes and laundry queen in my family, though I definitely use laundry machine (curious where that would fit in your matrix btw? :)

* I don't mind the act of lawn mowing but I absolutely resent the randomness of it - at some point north american society decided that we/they will 1. Adopt a very specific fast growing grass for ALL the lawns and 2. Having it more than ~5cm long is an affront to man and god and neighbourhood alike. Why they haven't just culturally picked cloverleaf or something is beyond me

* I like organizing my living space but I get zero sense of satisfaction out of vacuuming, dusting, and general maintenance. Many other people love it! In turn though, they probably get zero need to constantly rearchitect their home network like I do :->

In sum - I personally put laundry machine and auto-vacuum in very different category than showers and wiping bottoms, but if you lump them together, much power to you, though I don't think it's a tax bracket thing necessarily :)

I have a bidet to help wipe my bottom... It isn't enough that I can skip wiping completely, but it greatly reduces that chore.

I sometimes dream of being rich enough to afford a servant to do this for me. But realistically even if I was that rich I wouldn't subject someone to that indignity.

The way I see it is: My time is worth $0 unless I'd otherwise be earning money.

So if you're an hourly contract worker, and you would otherwise be billing $100/hr to write code or something, then it makes sense to pay a gardener to mow your lawn and a plumber to fix your toilet, as long as it's less than you're making.

But instead, if you'd otherwise just be doom scrolling on your phone or jerking off, you might as well mow that lawn yourself. Paying someone any amount of money is a waste.

I pretty much DIY everything around the house. I work hard for my money, and it feels lazy and wasteful to just ship it off to someone else to do what I am fully capable of doing myself. Maybe when I'm 80 and have trouble walking, I'll pay someone to move furniture around or wash my roof. But not while I'm able bodied.

> But instead, if you'd otherwise just be doom scrolling on your phone or jerking off, you might as well mow that lawn yourself. Paying someone any amount of money is a waste.

It sounds like you're saying "pay someone to save you time if you use the time to work, but not if you use the time to relax". One of the best possible uses of money is to save you time, no matter what you use the time for.

That assumes there is no value whatsoever in doing your own chores. If you want to value time w/friends & family over chores, fair enough, but doing chores is definitely a better & more valuable use of time than zoning out tik tok or gambling etc.

Mowing the lawn relaxes me. I find it meditative, and at the end I look back at the neatly cut grass and can see what I've done. It provides a sense of satisfaction. It's also a good excuse to get off my ass for a couple of hours and get a little exercise.

Exactly.

Let us understand each other that mowing the lawn relaxes some people, and to others it elevates anxiety and brings the sense of existential dread and time rapidly slipping through our fingers in meaningless repetitive kafkian never-ending tasks required by society for arbitrary unjustified reasons instead :-).

I used to be like you. One day I found out that my oldest daughter was almost 18, and my youngest one was already 13. I wish I had paid someone to have mowed that fucking law more times and played more time with my kids, spent more time with my wife.

Trying to fix it now. But the time I've lost already, this time is gone.

Kids need to see adults taking care of their responsibilities and not living a life of playtime.

There needs to be a balance, not all-or-nothing in either direction.

Do you not effectively put a dollar value on things you do for entertainment / personal satisfaction / fulfillment? Pick any two activities, and you can probably identify a dollar amount (which might be infinite) that would induce you to do one rather than the other.

So let's say you're playing a video game, and someone asks you to mow their lawn. How much money would they have to offer you to induce you to do so? That's the marginal dollar value of that video game over mowing their lawn.

Or let's say you're playing a video game, and you need to mow your own lawn, but you don't want to. How much would you pay someone else to mow it so that you can keep playing your game?

Of course, those two amounts would be different because you probably feel differently about mowing your own lawn than about mowing someone else's. The difference between the two should (if you're being consistent, which humans seldom are) be how much would someone have to pay you to mow their lawn instead of your own.

> Do you not effectively put a dollar value on things you do for entertainment / personal satisfaction / fulfillment?

No, of course not. It would be really bizarre to attach a dollar value to something that will not make or cost me money. I value my free time, but I'm not going to pretend there is some concrete dollar value when there is none.

>"My time is worth $0 unless I'd otherwise be earning money."

That's the key insight and difference, and not one we can necessarily persuade each other :). My time is worth a LOT to me. I can use the time to play with my kids, be with my wife, play a video game or a musical instrument, read a book, or even doomscroll, if that's what my brain needs at the time. These are things that bring me joy, and mowing the lawn doesn't. I spend a lot of my time doing things out of necessity that don't bring me joy. I have precious little time for things that do bring me joy. I'm not looking to optimize for things I hate.

Don't get me wrong, as I said, I DO laundry and dishes and cleaning and stupid lawn mowing (grr!) and some repairs etc (I don't even have a rumba :). I used to do more car maintenance myself. But when I do bring somebody in to do the work, I do not feel guilty about it - I work my ass off doing things I'm good at and being paid for it, and in turn I sometimes pay others who are way better and more efficient at something than I am :).

Milleage may vary :).

> buying a bottle of coke was a Birthday thing

That’s not middle class. You were poor. I know that, because I was there.

I thought the same until we started getting our house cleaned every two weeks.

It’s so freeing.

It feels well worth even a few hours of my work to pay for the time of the (so efficient) cleaners. So much better value than things most people don’t think twice about paying for (streaming services, faster Internet, a nice car, etc…)

I'll take it one step further - we have a 2-year-old toddler and recently I realized that I was spending a full, solid, real 1-1.5 hours per day doing the same kitchen & play area clean-up. Every day. No matter how hard I tried, the daily chaos of my wife & I working from home, preparing meals, and our family spending time in this part of the house meant it just needed this work.

I hired a lovely person recently who comes to the house for exactly that hour a day every day and now does this task for us. It's the most "luxury" labor service I've ever hired, and it, easily and without question, the best use of $$ I have ever spent on a service. I have an extra hour to hang with the family now and our kitchen & play area are now fully reset and spotless every night when we go to bed and every morning when we wake up.

It's not streaming service cheap, and I'm thankful that my business can generate enough $ to allow me to pay for this service, but man is it freeing and wonderful.

I can see the charm in hiring a cleaning person you trust, but I personally wouldn't extend that to paying a faceless corporation to send a robot to do it.

I'd much rather pay a nice human significantly more money than have it done by a stinking robot.

The real cause is that you and your wife never learned how to keep house. I'm in the same boat. My house is cluttered. Not like hoarder bad but stuff just piles up. I've been a guest where the house is always neat and everything is put away. The hosts just never let anything get out of place. Everything they own has a place and it always goes back there immediately after its used. They maintain this organized well kept home almost effortlessly, because they were taught how to do it at a young age by parents who were the same way. Whereas for me, it would take me several dedicated hours a day to get everything picked up and put away.

Did those people have young children?

Some of them, yes. But you'd hardly know looking at their house.

Those people are just talking the 1-1.5 hours that this person described and have spread it out rather than doing it at the end of the day.

Yes and no. They somehow tidy the house as they are moving through it anwyay. So it doesn't amount to substituting that time for something else they would be doing. Or at least that's how it appears to me.

I would love for a robot to wipe me after using the toilet - and I have a washlet for this!

It’s not about tax bracket. You can still pay your cleaning folks a reasonable wage and be kind to them. You can still treat them like human beings. It’s vulnerable to have another person tidy up after you, but fine in the end. Turns out vacuuming isn’t really that personal.

It’s one thing to have NEVER done the mundane chores and entirely another to save some time in your day while you’re at work to have someone help with it.

This got disturbing pretty quickly. Scatology meets HN.

It's like the family guy episode:

"Dad we're putting you in a nursing home"

"I don't wanna"

"Dad, there's people where who'll wipe your ass for you"

"Louis pack your things"

Do you consider a dishwasher to be a robot that does your chores?

A robot that could wipe after using the toilet (admittedly fairly easy with modern-day powered bidets), clean someone up, help them shower, etc. would actually be a really big deal for care of the elderly. Currently this is a job a human has to do.

It would allow elderly to regain a certain amount of independence. Often they start having trouble with just 1 or 2 of these tasks, but then a home health aide is needed or they have to get put in a nursing home. The cost of this kind of care is $5000 - $20k a month. So there's a lot of money on the table for a good robot.

Any robot that does this reliably is easily more than a decade away.

Did you mean that to sound distant? Because my reading is that if we have robots reliably doing these sorts of delicate tasks in a decade or two, it would be amazingly revolutionary and disruptive to the economy.

As long as it hits before my kids have to wipe my elderly ass I’m golden.

I mean, they kind of owe it to us.

I changed a lot of diapers.

It depends, really.

I would rather servicing five babies than one adult. Adults are heavier. Also. babies are born sterile, whatever infection they can have on them comes from the adults. Finally, you watch a baby grow stronger, while I (we) deteriorate. (That affects the caregiver morale)

Yes in fact I was doing humour not real commentary. I never had a problem with changing diapers. I never hated it and I did it lovingly and willingly. Even as a kid with my (10 year younger) baby brother.

Adult diapers and/or even just the general process of dealing with parents in their physically declining phase is a whole other story. I also know all about this.

Bring a human being into this dystopia without asking them, and then demand something off them. You’re a great parent.

Thanks, I do my best.

A decade for this kind of robot seems very optimistic. The latest one being prototyped in Japan can roll you on your side and help you out on socks.

Cleaning your ass or helping you shower is magnitudes more sensitive and complex

What's the gap between a fancy bidet with all the bells and whistles and the robot that doesn't exist yet? Showering is obviously harder.

I think we’re soon going to see a magical ChatGPT like moment for physical outputs. For instance, Figure’s Helix is only a 10M parameter NN. Once we get into the Billions we will start seeing leaps in progress just like LLMs.

Ivan Sutherland predicted the Holodeck in 1965:

https://www.quora.com/?qv_src=email

>Q: Can an “AI command line” replace the GUI as the primary user experience for computers, assuming the technology improves and irrespective of today’s state?

>A: Alan Kay -- Still trying to learn how to think better (May 26, 2026)

>The “related questions” have interesting slants — some of which make more or less sense.

>I think most people should be able to answer this for themselves if they look at this from a number of different angles.

>One is that we have multiple ways of “perceiving”, “knowing”, “learning”, etc. — for example by touch, sound, vision, symbolic representations, abstract languagues, etc. Besides inventing interactive computer graphics, Ivan Sutherland pointed out (in a famous 1964 paper) that “the ultimate display” should be able to do every kind of I/O that humans can do and experience. His famous last line with typical Ivan humor was “In the ultimate display, a simulated bullet would be fatal to its operator”!

[...]

----

The Ultimate Display -- Ivan E. Sutherland (Jan 1, 1965)

https://scispace.com/papers/the-ultimate-display-35zd3b9ucp

>TL;DR: The authors live in a physical world whose properties they have come to know well through long familiarity but lack corresponding familiarity with the forces on charged particles, forces in non-uniform fields, the effects of nonprojective geometric transformations, and high-inertia, low friction motion.

>Abstract: We live in a physical world whose properties we have come to know well through long familiarity. We sense an involvement with this physical world which gives us the ability to predict its properties well. For example, we can predict where objects will fall, how well-known shapes look from other angles, and how much force is required to push objects against friction. We lack corresponding familiarity with the forces on charged particles, forces in non-uniform fields, the effects of nonprojective geometric transformations, and high-inertia, low friction motion.

>A display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarity with concepts not realizable in the physical world. It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland. Computer displays today cover a variety of capabilities. Some have only the fundamental ability to plot dots. Displays being sold now generally have built in line-drawing capability. An ability to draw simple curves would be useful. Some available displays are able to plot very short line segments in arbitrary directions, to form characters or more complex curves. Each of these abilities has a history and a known utility.

[...]

>The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal. With appropriate programming such a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked.

Yet the insurance industry has been exploiting the elderly by selling Robot Insurance for decades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Gh_IcK8UM

If only there was some type of social network for taking care of each other at différent stage of life!

Was called community

Not everyone has the time or energy to do it. I estimate 10-20 hrs of chores a week for 2 adults 2 kids. Having cleaners is a nice touch when both parents work.

You are the minority - [0]

According to that article:

- The global cleaning services market is predicted to grow to roughly $482 billion in 2026 and $859 billion by 2030 with a 7.5% annual growth rate.

- There are over 1.4+ million cleaners currently employed in the U.S.

- The U.S. janitorial services market is worth $112 billion, with 1+ million cleaning businesses as of 2026.

- The average annual pay for a cleaning business owner in the U.S. is $127,973 a year.

- The average annual salary for a house cleaner in the U.S is $35,034.

- 73% of cleaning business owners expect revenue growth in 2026.

- 55% of cleaning businesses raised prices in the last 12 months.

- 41% of households use recurring cleaning services, as customers shift from one-time bookings to weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly plans.

[0] - https://www.getjobber.com/academy/cleaning/cleaning-industry...

> You are in the minority ... 41% of households use recurring cleaning services ...

Wouldn't that put OP in the majority?

If 41% of households are actively employing a cleaner then it seems very likely that more than 50% would be happy to have their home cleaned if only they could afford it (as opposed to the commenter starting this thread, who seems to see household cleaning as a positive part of their life).

How big of a bubble do you have to be in to be thinking "I like cleaning" is the majority position among normal people?

Is it “I like cleaning”,

or “I benefit from knowing some moron didn’t come flood the cracks of my floors and wood cabinetry, creating mold”?

Yet to come across pros doing it better than me, means I don’t hire pros yet.

> Is it “I like cleaning”

Yes, that really is what was said in the original comment we're discussing.

Somehow that got defended as a (possible) majority view.

For me, it's the invasiveness and lack of agency; your house is the most private space in your life. At least if I do the cleaning myself, there won't be anyone else to blame for things broken or gone missing.

I would absolutely purchase a robotic tool that brushes my teeth for me. I’m sure it would be much better I am at cleaning my teeth. I already use an electric toothbrush and a waterpik for exactly this reason.

Autobrush!

https://tryautobrush.com/

Presumably they feel more empowered, like an elephant must feel when a flock of birds are grooming them.

I outsource a bunch of things in life. Different things at different stages of life. Some of those things I have outsourced I don’t dislike doing myself. But often it comes down to freeing up time and, to some extent, keeping money flowing back to people in my community.

Unfortunately, we seem to lose more than we really gain, much of the time. Often it is 'sold' to us as 'convenient' but, I suspect, more often than not we don't gain that much

About as strange as letting someone else work on your car. Some people can do it without any discomfort. Could not be me.

> brush your teeth for you

aka electric toothbrush

> wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet

aka a bidet (or a toilet seat with a bidet)

> robot to bathe you

aka a shower

> dishes

aka a dishwasher

> laundry

aka a washer

If you want to do stuff yourself, use a manual toothbrush, learn how to wash your own clothes without a washer (people do this all the time, BTW), wash your own dishes without a dishwasher, don't use dry cleaning services, and use a bucket to take a bath. Also, don't use a vacuum cleaner.

> brush your teeth for you

aka electric toothbrush

> wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet

aka a bidet (or a toilet seat with a bidet)

> robot to bathe you

aka a shower

> dishes

aka a dishwasher

> laundry

aka a washer

> but I can't shake the feeling that you lose something about being a living, breathing being when you give up these mundane chores.

Say that when you have 3 kids, and cook most of the meals (i.e. no takeouts).

> don't use dry cleaning services

I agree with the rest of your comment but fuck dry cleaning services. Who does dry cleaning regularly?

I could be completely wrong about this, but I think a lot of women causal clothing specifically recommend dry cleaning, compared to men (unless you are in a field that wear suits everyday).

This is maybe sort of true, but few garments that say "dry clean only" actually need to be dry cleaned. This has typically more to do with laziness on the part of the manufacturers.

Things like lining, interfacing and structure are often strong indicators that a garment actually has to be dry-cleaned. I think those are at best only very slightly more common in women's casual clothing.

Maybe things have changed but finances mostly forced my kids and those in the neighborhood to grow up this way. No dishwasher, bidet (we're in the US anyway), electric toothbrush, and definitely cooked all meals. Maybe takeout pizza or chinese every couple months? Is this really so outlandish to you?

Well, if everyone would find living the old way perfectly normal, as you and me do, how would the big guys get their ROI and become even bigger?

One does not simply invest in something new without any effort to make the old look medievally obscurant.

No - it was the same with us (OK, we had a dishwasher, but for much of my adult life I didn't).

The key is this:

> finances mostly forced

For a while I even hand washed when I did have a dishwasher. Then I realized that was a mistake and I started utilizing it (the dishwasher uses less water, and less energy to heat the water compared to my running the tap on warm).

The point is that after N kids, it stops being therapeutic and merely something you just have to do, and you're happy if you can afford a way not to do it.

Weird leap. If we go by your logic, then broom is replaced by a vacuum cleaner. Automating something completely, aka getting someone to for it for you is a completely different thing.

I call that harpoon logic or half-dimensional logic. Works this way:

A subject is at the top of a cliff, facing the sea.

"I'd like to see the sea scenery better by approaching the edge".

A step is undertaken. The harpoon enters the mind.

"Oh, so I took this step, I've got to take another one".

N steps are undertaken. The subject is at the very edge right now.

"But hey, one can't stop the progress. Red lines, enough is enough, notions of overdevelopment etc are all excuses for luddites who don't value the merits of automation, easing the humankind's burden and removing all obstacles on the way to the best sea view".

A step more is undertaken.

Thunderous applause, turning into a standing ovation. And... Curtain!

Do you have anything against pressing the self-clean button on your oven rather than busting out the wire brush and baking soda?

I am quite similar but this will be inevitable when I get old:

> desiring a robot to bathe you, wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet, brush your teeth for you

My (EU) country is heading demographic catastrophe, so either I die in my feces or robots help me with hygiene.

Meanwhile I plan to downsize my home to reduce todays chores.

> tax bracket

From late 19th to early 20th centuries, it was common for British workers to hire charwomen to clean their places. Domestic service was the most typical job for women by the time. Historically it wasn't really something exclusive for the rich.

Do you feel the same way about walking? If you wanted to get anywhere on land pre Bronze age your only option was to walk. Then we started riding horses, later we invented carriages, much much later bicycles, cars, and airplanes. Do these also take away something about being a living, breathing being? Do you feel that your life is lessened by these options?

A different question is. Imagine that you are living with a partner and you agree on a distribution of labour. Let’s say you do the hunting and your partner cleans the house. They are happy with the agreement and fully consent to it. Do you feel it takes away from you being a living, breathing being?

It would seem like such an obvious win-win if these cleaning robotics companies just won a couple of contracts with some tech forward hotel chains.

  - Faster R&D since hotel rooms are regular/familiar
  - Cost center for hotels so revenue would be higher/straightforward
  - No privacy issues since robots would not be present in rooms with guests
  - Easier servicing/maintenance since multiple robots at same location

My guess is that they're currently nowhere near robust or effective enough to make that realistic. They need to bootstrap somehow, if only get good enough to convince hotel management that their approach will be realistic in the future.

>girl management

autocorrect glitch?

Haha, yes, meant to write "hotel management". I'll update the answer to fix that.

This is my take too. Hotels wouldn't be happy if a robot knocked a water jar on the carpet, or scratched a wall, but a home owner? We're doing it for free and you asked for it!

Hotel's girl management might be more undertanding than I assume, though.

in that case they could operate the robots remotely just like self driving cars sometimes

Basically every AI startup promises the world instead of descoping to something that is achievable and profitable. Easier to scam investors than make a working product.

I’m not sure it can ever be cheaper than a human cleaner so maybe the hotel industry does not want to subsidize the training.

These guys may actually just be angling to sell off the training data. diverse training data is more valuable

Yeah, this seems like a much more likely option. Get a ton of good, completely unique scans of real world environments you could never replicate in testing and even if your product sucks and you fail entirely, you’ve got a really good dataset to sell to a big company that’s close on a product and needs data to enhance/refine on.

Also, cleaning kitchens is a huge part of the job. Hotel rooms either have no kitchen or a very minimal one. You're not going to learn how to clean an oven or load a dishwasher in a hotel room. (And loading a dishwasher requires categorizing thousands of things as dishwasher safe or not! Stainless steel skillet, yes; cast iron skillet, no; etc.)

Does not make any sense for them since it’s not a unique environment. You could rent one hotel room or build a cheap replica and get all of your training done in one shot. They’re obviously trying to hit unique environments with many different unforeseen obstacles to overcome.

> Does not make any sense for them since it’s not a unique environment.

nonsense. If it worked for one hotel, that would be ground breaking. Hotels would line up to have theirs be the next test case.

He means it doesn’t make sense for the startup. The comment you’re replying to, is arguing that this point from the gp is a disadvantage instead of an advantage:

> hotel rooms are regular/familiar

"I always thought that Homejoy were planning to automate as much as possible, if not everything, related to cleaning services using robotics and stuff, and that humans were only a temporary measure while developing technology." -devgutt 2015 [0]

This quote about robots doing home cleaning has been living in my head rent free, and refusing to cleanup after itself, for over a decade. It seemed so crazy to me in 2015 that anyone would seriously consider home cleaning robots to be on a realistic timeline. Yet here we are in 2026 and robots could plausibly clean our homes beyond vacuuming and mopping.

Humans training robots now completely makes sense to me. I think Sunday Robotics use of people wearing "skill capture gloves" [1] that both capture data and limit range of motion to that of the robotic hands is particularly clever. I wish success to both these and other companies in the space, so that someday soon there will be just a little fewer housework around the house, and we move a bit closer to the Jetsons.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9986693 [1] https://youtu.be/QeVnwtCANZ8?si=JoSps5MCxs7zPp0f&t=33

I used to be really excited for stuff like this. Now I realize, home cleaning bots will basically just be cameras in your house reporting back everything it sees to the advertisers/government. Not a very utopian outlook anymore.

Robo vacuums are already doing this. What a time to be alive and all that.

I believe most robo vacuums have lidar and other sensors. They don't have cameras.

2022 data leak, investigated by MIT "A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet"

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-i...

At some point you're gonna be able to self host this stuff, which will likely be required for security reasons in some kinds of facilities. Now whether it's open and not spying on you still, that's another question.

I feel like a self host will be too expensive for most (like self hosting frontier models at a decent speed)

Not to mention it directly targets a job category overwhelmingly held by poor and marginalized women, especially immigrants, in order to boost the profits of the automation company and the hotel chains it serves. Destroying the livelihoods of some of the most vulnerable and exploited workers on the planet with no pretense of caring what happens to them or their families.

Any company like this actively working to liquidate entire categories of menial work with no tangible support for sufficient social safety net programs and retraining is both sociopathic and digging its own grave for the inevitable populist backlash against what's shaping up to be the biggest class war in history. It's too broad a change, too fast, and these companies are running society off a cliff with no care for what happens when gravity kicks in. (Apart from the techno-fascists who plan on bunkering down while crushing the desperate masses with surveillance and killer robots, ofc.)

> here we are in 2026 and robots could plausibly clean our homes beyond vacuuming and mopping.

It is very bold to just assert this is true. Certainly it will be possible eventually, but there's still _lots_ of disagreement in the industry about what is realistic within 3-5 years. See this rodney brooks article for a good overview of the difficulties: https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dex...

The fact that devgutt was talking about this in 2015 gives some hint at its unique combination of [seems really easy] and [is really hard].

That article is a load of baloney, and I wish people stopped posting it around as if it's some kind of gospel.

Modern robots are nowhere near being bottlenecked by hardware. They are all bottlenecked by AI. Today's hardware with perfect AI would absolutely demolish tasks like "clean a house". Today's AI with perfect hardware would still fumble.

We know that because we can't even train an AI policy that would reliably solve tasks in a sim with perfect sensors and perfect execution.

> Modern robots are nowhere near being bottlenecked by hardware. They are all bottlenecked by AI.

It is possible for both elements to be insufficient.

The Jetsons, where we polluted the Earth so badly, we had to live above the clouds. But at least we won't have to pick up our clothes.

> It seemed so crazy to me in 2015 that anyone would seriously consider home cleaning robots to be on a realistic timeline. Yet here we are in 2026 and robots could plausibly clean our homes beyond vacuuming and mopping.

I don't think that they can plausibly clean our homes. I don't think it's much different from back in 2015 when everyone was talking about self-driving cars and auto-pilot yet here we are over a decade later and nobody is getting into their car and then taking a nap on the way to the office. Most people don't have any kind of "self-driving" car today at all. My guess is that if we have housecleaning robots in 2036 they'll be shitty at it and very much watered down from the Jetsons style future tech companies want you to daydream about today.

>nobody is getting into their car and then taking a nap on the way to the office.

Except that you can do exactly this with Waymo for the last 2 years.

You can iif you live in on of the supported cities that is not currently suspended. Waymo is a promising participant here, but it very much isn't at the "just be driven to work stage" for almost everyone.

>You can iif you live in on of the supported cities that is not currently suspended.

Yes. The claim was that “nobody” is doing this today when in fact tens / hundreds of thousands of people are doing this today. The tech is here, next is widespread adoption.

Not "their car" and also extremely limited in availability and has remote drivers taking over when needed. We're not in the future just yet

The claim was that “nobody” is doing this. It’s weird to split hairs on whether or not the own the car. Who cares if you’re napping in a driverless vehicle on the way to work?

They were at least thinking about it a year ago (https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/waymo-toyota-automated-dr...) and maybe it will happen someday but I consider the fact that it hasn't happened as evidence that the technology isn't ready. At the very least it's a sign that car companies don't want to invest in enough Filipino "drivers" to let everyone pretend that their personal car is driving itself ( https://www.techspot.com/news/111233-waymo-admits-autopilot-...)

I'm not sure there would even be a market for a much more expensive vehicle that can't drive itself outside of the very small number of carefully mapped out and managed zones they are currently capable of operating in. Maybe in another 10-20 years we'll see some progress but for right now they're still working out how to tell the difference between a flood and a puddle which is a huge problem and only one of countless others they haven't addressed yet while they continue to beta test on a small number of our public streets.

This isn't splitting hairs, it's technology not living up to promises that were being hyped over 10 years ago. In 2012 it was "Everyday folk will have access to cars that drive themselves within five years" (https://www.computerworld.com/article/1526480/self-driving-c...) but nobody today has access to a real self-driving car and even those who live in an area waymo supports aren't your average person, they are the very very small exception to the entire rest of the country (to say nothing about the rest of the world).

The Jetsons wrecked their world. All housing was on stilts. Flying cars were a necessity because there were no roads, only water. They melted the poles!!

All I’m saying is careful what you wish for. Wish fulfillment is always outsourced to the Djinn.

robots can not yet plausibly walk into our homes.

Ha! My wife just asked me about a random job she found on Craigslist the other day. It was for what looked like a shell company, offering $10/hr to have you strap a camera to your head while you do specific chores like laundry, dishes, etc. She asked me what I thought it was and I said "someone is farming training data." Turns out.

Well, either that, or a fetish.

Hey, $10 is $10.

Honestly, given the potential impact on the job market, the fetish is far more honorable.

Lol, not a chance. I'm sure whatever agreement you click through when you agree to this has all kinds of limitations on liability and an arbitration clause, so when they leave pictures of your house in an open S3 bucket you have no recourse to seek compensation. I'd rather let a stranger off the street live in my house - at least they have human emotions like shame.

Just a reminder: "Roomba testers feel misled after intimate images ended up on Facebook"

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-i...

Three obnoxious takeovers to dismiss on that page: full screen takeover, 25% off summer sale. Cookie warning. 25% off first story sign up banner.

The internet sucks.

I used to have an easier time ignoring the mass surveillance angle. If I'm 1 in 300,000,000, then someone would have to have a good reason to waste resources on investigating little ole' me. But with AI, safety via obfuscation no longer exists (to the degree it ever did). It doesn't matter if I'm 1 of 30 records or 1 of 30 billion records - the difference is a a few minutes of processing time.

> As its website puts it: “You get a spotless apartment. We get training data. Everyone wins.”

I don't really agree in certain cases of apartment cleaning.

I learned a lot with my first one bedroom apartment, and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. There's a fine line between luxury/convenience and laziness/helplessness.

It doesn't really sit right with me even though I do think a proper science fiction cleaning robot can become a great thing.

This is true for most AI solutions. "Automate the note taking/slide generation communication." Turns out that stuff is important for building understanding. Yeah, making slides might be boring. But what you are really doing is telling the story of what you are actually working on, and in making these slides, you can shore up any plot holes or other issues. Likewise for writing, learning to synthesize information and tell it again helps build your understanding of the problem space. Likewise for notetaking keeping you more engaged with whatever it is you are documenting.

All this delegating leads to real atrophy of understanding. No one wants to admit it though. Certainly not the people whose salaries depend on not admitting it.

This would be great for me.

I have MS. Currently, my sister lives with me and does the chores (I pay our bills), but she's planning on moving out soon.

Paying for a human cleaner is doable but expensive for me, and my disability means keeping up with chores can be difficult or dangerous. For example, I have balance issues that can make using a ladder or stepstool dangerous.

It's less that I'm lazy and more that I don't want to crack my head open + there are multiple times a year when all I can do is work and rest in bed.

Even if somehow this was a good idea, it seems like an expensive way to do it when apparently in they are already doing it for much cheaper in India.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/26/human-archive-taps-into-in...

It seems to me, they could train the bot to do most tasks like the laundry and vacuuming and dusting and so forth without needing a large sample of homes. And we have the situation where one robot can train all the others so you need the robot in the home not a human unless it’s just supervising the robot.

If training robots doesn't pan out, they could always pivot and use the data to train AI to control humans instead. Some industries such as Amazon warehouse pickers and drivers are effectively already this.

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

The thing actually ordered around people how to clean a restroom step by step. Yikes.

I've never seen so much disdain for minimum wage workers.

------ "For example, when Jane entered the restroom, Manna used a simple position tracking system built into her headset to know that she had arrived. Manna then told her the first step.

Manna: “Place the ‘wet floor’ warning cone outside the door please.”

When Jane completed the task, she would speak the word “OK” into her headset and Manna moved to the next step in the restroom cleaning procedure.

Manna: “Please block the door open with the door stop.”

Jane: “OK.”

Manna: “Please retrieve the bucket and mop from the supply closet.”

Jane: “OK.”

And so on."

I'm not bothered by a lot of tech that other's object to. I'm fine with having an Alex in my house, a connected car, Microsoft Windows. But I can't imagine consenting to _this_. There's too much personal data the can inadvertently collect, and too little oversight with little upside for me.

So...if I just happened to know a landlord with several thousand college student tenants busy moving out right now - should he contact Shift? Or does he need to remind his tenants of his own high cleaning fees, then helpfully suggest that they contact Shift?

Sounds like a similar take to the one of pokemon?

https://gilescrouch.medium.com/pok%C3%A9mon-go-an-accidental...

Who is funding this? Can I wear that cap and clean my own house and get paid if I share the video?

Related/unrelated?

Airbnb host alleges $12k in damages after SF startup tested a robot in his house

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317093

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ChrisArchitect

Seems like a relevant time to post this Danny Gonzales video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N24UqL389rs

You will be amused.

The company’s last video is 4 weeks old!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N24UqL389rs

I'm astonished they (sill) exist. The idea is so beyond stupid, I thought it was a joke at first.

I'm still not really sure that its not one...interesting times.

Shift will record a point cloud of every object in your home for free.

I hope they do it better than those guys:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317093

And so it begins; even the blue collar jobs aren't safe.

Everyone is trying to make it possible, without thinking if they actually should.

I wonder how they expect people to work, to be able to buy all the junk they put out.

So, klankers will fix it, clean it and make it? What will meat do?

If anything's for free, you are the product.

Training robots will require data they won't be collecting. All in all a pointless waste of money driven by hype and a fundamental lack of technical knowledge.

I don't know how such start-ups get funded and come up with such harebrained ideas. Unless its a marketing gimmick, I don't understand what this company is looking to learn. A tiny RAG learning with a small sample + maybe getting some professional cleaners and data from any Chinese robo cleaning companies on potential floor configurations would compress this cycle and save them a lot of money. Good luck to the investors - but if they signed up for this plan, they deserve a their money being cleaned up better than users' homes

”We get training data.” E.g., photos of your children, an inventory of your books, the contents of your medicine cabinet. They may not have plans to sell this stuff, but whoever acquires them certainly will.

Finally a reason to display my Mega Butt VHS tape prominently in my library.

I wonder how long it will be before we see politician/celebrity houses with full 3d walkthroughs made from gaussian splats that source from this kind of "every type of interior in the world" mass data set. I wonder if that will prompt some kind of legislative action against this type of service.

There’s a scandal/controversy occurring right now after someone leaked photos of the inside of Ariana Grande’s apartment.

yikes! that's pretty gross. I hope there's some appropriate consequences.

Exactly and any "future robots" that are actually capable of cleaning your home will be doing the same thing. It'd be streaming 24/7 audio/video/sensor data of everyone and everything in your home back to the company where all of it will be analyzed and used to make assumptions about you and your family which will be sold and resold.

At this point I wouldn't allow an internet connected roomba into my home, I'm sure as hell not going to let a robot maid in.

I’m a little more hopeful that the future will allow for local (network free) frontier AI technology. Being that I’m a tech enthusiast and computer science nerd I tend to live less on the bleeding edge of technology because of privacy infringing hardware. Take for example meta glasses. So many people have adopted them because they don’t care about privacy as much as I do. So they get to live with the latest and greatest. Though, running a local LLM on my laptop (that is state of the art) has made me a little more hopeful that the future is around the corner. Who would have thought that one day we could run advanced AI on a laptop that’s able to do RAG and CAG.

I fully agree that the only hope is offline/open source systems that we can verify are working for us and not anyone else. The more complex the hardware is the more difficult it'll be to keep them safe. To avoid bugging my home it's easy enough to open up my PS5 controllers to pull the two microphones out, but I imagine it'll be a lot more work to make sure there are no radios connected to a SoC tucked away somewhere in a household robot.

I'm not sure I'd call meta glasses the "latest and greatest". Even if there were no privacy concerns I wouldn't feel left out when it comes to giving facebook the ability to plaster ads on every surface in your field of vision. The tech has a lot of potential, but the product people are using today is trash I feel better off without.

I think an interesting case would be if the data was provided to law enforcement directly or indirectly and they use it to gain access to a home if they see drug paraphernalia crack pipe or other items of interest illegal weapons under exigent circumstances or similar laws. Autonomous robots could become the ultimate snitch.

Would a robot report a wife beater? Child abuser? Could a robot legally physically intervene if a human cries for help from another human? Will the robots be hacker proof? Will robots assassinate people in their sleep?

Considering we already have Apple wanting to scan your devices for whatever their AI thinks is child porn we're heading in that direction. There was one report of Amazon Echo reporting a domestic violence situation to 911. The Sheriff said that it happened, Amazon said that it didn't but failed to explain how the 911 call happened saying that the echo isn't even capable of calling 911 although it can place phone calls, and Alexa Emergency Assist and Echo Connect are/were both capable of reaching 911. (https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/amazon-alexa-c...). If one of those services wasn't in use, I'd guess an employee was listening and called putting amazon into damage control mode.

My thought process around such things is that tech follows the same rules as the pirate code. Tech will do what tech can do until executive bonuses are repeatedly impacted. As such I think it's best to just keep that stuff away from humans and homes until laws and case law evolves or devolves into whatever it will ultimately become.

I submitted a poll [1] on this and a few people here would permit these bots in their homes. I also asked people in my local community and their answer was a resounding no.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302523

They might for a while. However it is somewhat likely that the courts will shut this down as an unreasonable search since no probable cause existed. Though if the beating is bad enough to require hospitalization and the robot calls 911 to get that, the rest of the evidence will be admitted in that case, but only because the robot has reason to call 911, and in turn it was an emergency search.

there are lots of different ways to take this, have fun arguing about the different edge cases and what the constitution (notice that I did not specify which constitution - there are many countries with different ones and different courts!) says.

... and also share those images with dozens of companies and potentially have those images leak online. Example: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/photos-robot-roomba-vacuum...

The Audacity of these people

Slum lords will love this between renters. or airbnb owners.

Even though it is free, they could even take it from the deposit of renters moving out.

I would prefer that $0 for cleaning gets taken out of my deposit.

your photos of your kids, your books, and the contents of your medicine cabinet are already in a bunch of giant corporations' databases attributed to you...

they don't need photos, they already know everything you buy

>"hey may not have plans to sell this stuff, but whoever acquires them certainly will."

If accquirer acquires, it's because seller sold.

Shift will file for bankruptcy

Where do I sign up?

NYC ZIP codes only: shiftapp.nyc/book

And since it's humans they probably won't do all that damage like in the other thread today ("SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317093

> Footage from inside your home is, of course, what you’re paying for the cleaning service with. On its website, Shift says customers’ “privacy is fully protected,” with sensitive details like names, faces, or personal information from screens and ID cards blurred and anonymized before being used for AI training.

OK, but do they store the footage in such a way that it's not tied to my physical address? This dataset is useful in one particular way--to identify valuable targets to rob. When they get hacked, will the attackers be able to exfiltrate these data in an actionable way? I don't get why folks don't ask the obvious questions. The company's answer to this question (probably involving lots of squirming and weasel words) would have made the story interesting.

EDIT: <facepalm>these are probably the people who have an amazon alexa, a google nest, a ring door lock, an app to remote start their car, and another app to control their oven</facepalm>

"Shift will break dishes for free to train future robots"

"clean"

Are these the same people that were renting airbnbs and wrecking them using them to train their robots?

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