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...
Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots
161–170 of 272 posts
Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 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…
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.
Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots
#164I wonder how they expect people to work, to be able to buy all the junk they put out.
Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots
#165Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots
#166I'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 ap…
> 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…
I agree with the rest of your comment but fuck dry cleaning services. Who does dry cleaning regularly?
Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Could be a greedy landlord, but they did turn off his security cameras, so I'm giving him the benefit of doubt for now.
Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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 ke…
Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 o…
Any robot that does this reliably is easily more than a decade away.