The fact that this made it to the news cycle is indicative enough of the airbnb owner smelling money once they found out a robotics company is involved, regardless of the extent of damage/wear
SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
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Re: SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
#42> Founded by alums of Tesla and the autonomous vehicle company Cruise, the San Francisco startup has received hundreds of millions in venture capital funding and is valued at $2 billion Stop outsourcing the cost of your vision to the rest of society. Especially when it’s peanuts to you and meaningful to, in this case, the host of what they call an apartment and you seem to think is a test course.
Nobody in this startup landscape gives a shit about anybody or anything that isn’t, at that very moment, contributing to their product development, market share, or raising capital. Even then, they only give a shit if they can’t avoid it and still get what they want. The second they are no longer useful, they’re thrown out like a bag of moldy tangerines. Morally bankrupt “leaders” employing people too inexperienced t…
This is the product of "rugged individualism" so prized of Reagan/Thatcher politics. Thatcher meant exactly this when she said "there's no such thing as society".
I've got mine, you can all go f*ck yourselves.
We need to get back to a place where other people matter, where the implicit social contract is honoured by everyone, and there are consequences for breaking it.
Re: SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, it's good that they're testing things in different places. Environments vary. But hundreds of millions sounds like enough money to get some industrial or dead commercial space (even in/around SF) and outfit it to be like an apartment. Or six different ones, and six others two weeks from now, and two weeks after that. The cost of the space and the carpenters/painters/drywallers/handymen/managers/whatevers woul…
Or, just throwing this out there, secretly list their own places and have robots clean up after the guests to evaluate -real places- that have -actually been used-. The key here though is that the places need to be theirs (or at least be a clear contract with the actual owner with full consent and understanding).
A robotics startup at this phase is unlikely to successfully clean an apartment. Usually it’s a lot more about data collection and training. Cleaning an apartment is very hard. The humanoid startup Figure showed their robot moving a few dishes from a nearly empty dishwasher to empty cabinets, and they’re an established company. Actually cleaning is very very hard and the systems are just not very capable yet.
Re: SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
These bots are going to arrive suddenly and in huge volume. I’m not sure when it will happen, but when it does, it will be extremely fast. The software is basically ready, and the hardware isn’t too far off. The processing latency will be problematic but with local inference improving quickly, this will all come together into the perfect storm for the arrival of the bot army. I don’t think any of us are prepared for…
No, neither the hardware nor software is anywhere even remotely ready, where by "ready" we mean "safe to share living spaces with unsupervised children and pets without EVER accidentally reducing your toddler to a fine paste, literally a 0% chance". That's the minimum that people will accept, and that's more than ten years away, if it ever happens.
Good news, the current apocalyptic memory prices will mean that only apocalyptically rich people will be able to afford them at the toddler-pasting stage if they come out any time soon!
Re: SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
#45Doubtful these clowns even have commercial insurance for these rentals. What a deceitful and dangerous way to build a business - to save (what?) a few thousand per rental?
Re: SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why the employees? Do you think they were operating without direction from their managers? If we want to put a stop to this sort of behavior from businesses we can't be punishing employees for this behavior, we have to run it up the chain.
You are, in fact, allowed to hate both the player and the game. It is long established that "just following orders" is not a defense.
I don’t know if the concept of the Nuremberg defense is really applicable to, you know, basic property damage.
Re: SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
#47> He looked through a window and saw black cables taped to the walls. A man was typing on a laptop sitting next to what appeared to be a robot. This sounds a lot like criminal invasion of privacy. Edit: What are you downvoting? You can’t secretly watch Airbnb guests through a window you rented to them for the same reason you can’t put spy cameras in their bathroom.
Sounds like looking though a window.
Re: SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, it's good that they're testing things in different places. Environments vary. But hundreds of millions sounds like enough money to get some industrial or dead commercial space (even in/around SF) and outfit it to be like an apartment. Or six different ones, and six others two weeks from now, and two weeks after that. The cost of the space and the carpenters/painters/drywallers/handymen/managers/whatevers woul…
They want realistic randomness in the apartment layouts. This is a quick, effective way to get that. If they were honest with the hosts, it wouldn’t even be a bad idea.
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Re: SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
#49This is just the most perfect Silicon Valley microcosm.
How many startups work is they simply break the law. The gamble is that you can get big enough fast enough that you can then lobby for a change in the law before governments catch up. Uber and Airbnb are like the posterchildren for this. Taxi services are regulated. You can't run an illegal hotel in a residential area. Simple.
So what we have here is another company who doesn't want to make a test kitchen or house. No, that's too expensive. So they'll instead use another startup to effectively steal a lab. It's layers upon layers of illegality, basically.
So if this succeeds and this company creates waves of domestic robots, we can then start to imagine what the next layer is. Will somebody rent an Airbnb with domestic robots so it can then sublet those robots to somebody else or use them for tasks they weren't designed for?
Re: SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
#50Can any lawyer clear this up for me? If the company ends up having no commercial success and the lawsuits for damages rack up, can they just close the company file for bankruptcy and face no consequences? Or is there some civil or criminal risk to this behaviour?
As a slight hint, one of the more common types of corporation is an "LLC". LLC stands for Limited Liability Company.
If the company's owners had unlimited liability for problems the company caused, that wouldn't be much of an LLC, would it? The primary purpose of an LLC is to make it so that the owners (often the founders) cannot personally be held responsible for debts the company incurs, even debts incurred through their instructions.
This also includes debts caused by punishment for the company breaking civil contracts, but doesn't make individuals who use the company to break the law immune to criminal charges. But the standard of evidence for prosecuting that type of malfeasance is pretty high...