Suspiciously absent: a rough idea of what percentage of tasks need the assistance.
Why an AI company cleaned my New York City apartment for free
Good good
Therefore the responsibility is always 5 steps removed
This sort of menial task would likely be given to someone in a poorer part of the world, who ironically will be some of the first to master the first generation of remotely operated high tech robots.
The revolution against the rich will be led by poor precariats armed with robots.
If anything, robots will make rich people richer and their position more secure. Once again, you're hoping for a technological solution to non-technological problems
$7,999 a clanker. I can totally imagine hordes of poor people driving around in turret-equipped F-150s packed with robots in evil facemasks.
- Hey, bankster, hands upon the fucking wall!
Even if robots do get disabled in just 5 minutes, 30 seconds of surprise is plenty for a coordinated decapitation strike (both literally and metaphorically) once enough of the leadership (national or business, take your pick) normalise having these around them, in their homes, preparing things for the next morning while the owners sleep.
Even on a small scale, some random hacker's going to turn one of these into "Mr Stabby the 100% Deniable Assassin". I'm fairly confident this prediction will be ignored until it happens, and moderately confident that when it does some newspaper will find this quotation and use it as their headline.
Some guys in a mediterranean country are drooling right now...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer
Nice! Thanks!
... I mean not "nice" as in "all that sounds nice" . I mean "nice" as in "nice dystopia".
Is your doubt caused by blankets being bigger than shirts?
(I didn't see it folding a button-up shirt, only tee-shirts. That's an extra degree of difficult and I do doubt that it can do that.)
A robot folds a shirt and you think it can fold a tee? Not unless it's explicitly trained to fold that one tee, too.
If they ever get the tech down (I doubt it), they will then try move to broader labour replacement.
This is why all the robots need to be humanoid.
moving a soft object from a to b is doable, folding/separating/sorting at any kind of speed is very much an area of active research.
Teleoperated robots are a better fit for businesses and public spaces
folding a flat, well presented tshirt, that is a known quantity, and never inside out, is fairly "easy"
in an unknown environment, with unknown clothes, that's still active area of research. Its still not that practical to navigate in a house yet.
> To get it right, we designed and built our own actuators, remote actuation system, and safety systems.
I feel that there might be a degree of ... overconfidence here.
I'm curious what they felt was lacking in current commercial/industrial robotics safety systems.
Annoying when you play games, likely expensive when the robot keeps breaking things.
There's a surprising number of labour simulators sold as VR headset games:
https://skyhookgames.com/lawn-mowing-simulator-vr-is-out-now...
It would be great if the operator could say things like, in above example, “you forgot to close the door, make sure you never leave this door open, even if you have to open it for a task and it’s not explicitly said you should always imply the door needs to be closed after the task. As a general rule, the door should never be open longer than 1 minute longer than it needs to be for task performance” or something similar and this trains the model over time.
My in-laws have a full time live in housekeeper that costs $500 per month. And where she’s from, this is a huge opportunity that she went to “maid school” for and many consider excellent compensation. She’s able to send this money home and provides for many family members and has amassed a bit of a real estate empire back home. But, she is absentee. She lives away and rarely gets to visit only about 2-3 weeks a year. So I feel that’s quite sad. They obviously don’t live in the US, because this employment would cost many times more here and probably impossible to even get the proper visas.
Now if this maid was able to live in her village, with her family, and make the same income but perform her tasks through a robot then I think she’d see immediate value in that. So would consumers in America who would love to have housekeepers but can’t afford the local labor rates. Even if you can afford some here, you could get much more for the same budget. A lot of Americans pay this rate for 1-2 cleanings per month, that’s dumb money if you could spend it on something that would sweep up every crumb the day it hit the ground.
Yeah, that's not the goal of these things.
The key is when the robot can use all the same tools you can, the generalist robot has a value high enough to pay for this technology.
I’d need more diligence but would certainly pay $8k on a mower that did a great job consistently. A service cost me $5000 per year so it has a reasonable break even if it’s built well. Robot mowers are pretty hands on, I’d almost rather just diy it.
I feel like this is blowing smoke a bit. If this better tech was possible it would be available, there’s always a market even if it’s at the high end. Do you have anything specific to point to? Any builders/makers that have done this? I feel like this stuff gets touted as “oh if they just had affordable lidar” or whatever then it would solve it, but IRL the variety of homes and yards is so large that it still doesnt generally perform well.
The conditions are ripe for a builder.ai esque scam but with robotics.
Here is one for the contrary (just a book review. The citation is the book).
https://cleantechnica.com/2026/04/06/we-need-to-tax-billiona...
That's not really how that works. Almost all of that money is tied up in operating businesses. Most very rich people mostly hold investments in stock - and generally at large companies. That's debt, not an asset I think the way you're thinking of. Overall, taking that money out of market holdings reduces the value of those holdings, for everyone else as well. You really end up lowering the retirement savings value of everyone who has a retirement plan by some amount.
The target audience is the “regular-rich bourgeoisie”.
EDIT: Jeez, it looks like that's an 11 years old thread. Time does indeed fly.
EDIT 2: The source for the claim is paywalled, but this is how the Cultural impact chapter of the movie's Wikipedia page closes:
> In 2025, Rivera noted that a tech CEO claimed the film had been an inspiration for his company to employ a remote labour force in the Global South in order to operate robots in the Global North, and that the film has been used in pitch decks for various start-ups.
... once again bringing to mind the "At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus" meme.
As a parent this seems godsent if it works as advertised just for its overnight reset.
Now if they can’t make the autonomy work to maintain the economics then I’d need an exit clause but other than that, have at it boss.
But I don’t need high percentage autonomy out of the box was my point.
This will almost certainly depend on the customer and residence. I don't think subscription pricing will be fair, but it can at least be budgeted for out of pensions and such for the people needing to pay for assistance.