Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 272 posts

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

#91

Post by dnnddidiej »

QuercusMax wrote: post #82
yoyohello13 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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)

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

#92

Post by woah »

somethoughts wrote: post #68

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

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

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

#93

Post by dnnddidiej »

hsnv wrote: 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…

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.

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

#94

Post by falcor84 »

robots0only wrote: post #83
trollbridge wrote: post #79

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.

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.

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

#95

Post by falcor84 »

rglover wrote: post #56

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.

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

#96

Post by chrisweekly »

stbtrax wrote: post #84
bluGill wrote: post #49

Earlier 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…

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".

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

#97

Post by thalesac »

tikhonj wrote: post #75
somethoughts wrote: post #68

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.

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

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

#98

Post by janalsncm »

bluGill wrote: post #49
necubi wrote: post #11

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...

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 did not respond to requests for comment

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

#99

Post by signatoremo »

hsnv wrote: 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…

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...

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

#100

Post by Jordan-117 »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #30
aleyan wrote: post #29

"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 th…

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.

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.)

Post reply on HN