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Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

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Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#171
post #6

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 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…

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?

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#172
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 ;)

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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)

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#174

Earlier 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.

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

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

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#175
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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? Th…

> 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.

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#177
post #6

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 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…

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.

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#179
post #6

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 ap…

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…

> buying a bottle of coke was a Birthday thing

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

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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).
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