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Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/939765/ai-training-data-startup-shift-free-cleaning
13•evilsimon•1h ago

Comments

p1esk•46m ago
Where do I sign up?
Barbing•39m ago
NYC ZIP codes only: shiftapp.nyc/book

And since it's humans they probably won't do all that damage like in the other thread today ("SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317093

sublinear•38m ago
> As its website puts it: “You get a spotless apartment. We get training data. Everyone wins.”

I don't really agree in certain cases of apartment cleaning.

I learned a lot with my first one bedroom apartment, and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. There's a fine line between luxury/convenience and laziness/helplessness.

It doesn't really sit right with me even though I do think a proper science fiction cleaning robot can become a great thing.

asdff•32m ago
This is true for most AI solutions. "Automate the note taking/slide generation communication." Turns out that stuff is important for building understanding. Yeah, making slides might be boring. But what you are really doing is telling the story of what you are actually working on, and in making these slides, you can shore up any plot holes or other issues. Likewise for writing, learning to synthesize information and tell it again helps build your understanding of the problem space. Likewise for notetaking keeping you more engaged with whatever it is you are documenting.

All this delegating leads to real atrophy of understanding. No one wants to admit it though. Certainly not the people whose salaries depend on not admitting it.

sonofhans•34m ago
”We get training data.” E.g., photos of your children, an inventory of your books, the contents of your medicine cabinet. They may not have plans to sell this stuff, but whoever acquires them certainly will.
2OEH8eoCRo0•29m ago
Finally a reason to display my Mega Butt VHS tape prominently in my library.
catapart•25m ago
I wonder how long it will be before we see politician/celebrity houses with full 3d walkthroughs made from gaussian splats that source from this kind of "every type of interior in the world" mass data set. I wonder if that will prompt some kind of legislative action against this type of service.
autoexec•21m ago
Exactly and any "future robots" that are actually capable of cleaning your home will be doing the same thing. It'd be streaming 24/7 audio/video/sensor data of everyone and everything in your home back to the company where all of it will be analyzed and used to make assumptions about you and your family which will be sold and resold.

At this point I wouldn't allow an internet connected roomba into my home, I'm sure as hell not going to let a robot maid in.

slicktux•4m ago
I’m a little more hopeful that the future will allow for local (network free) frontier AI technology. Being that I’m a tech enthusiast and computer science nerd I tend to live less on the bleeding edge of technology because of privacy infringing hardware. Take for example meta glasses. So many people have adopted them because they don’t care about privacy as much as I do. So they get to live with the latest and greatest. Though, running a local LLM on my laptop (that is state of the art) has made me a little more hopeful that the future is around the corner. Who would have thought that one day we could run advanced AI on a laptop that’s able to do RAG and CAG.
hsnv•32m ago
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 apples to oranges, but I can't shake the feeling that you lose something about being a living, breathing being when you give up these mundane chores.

hansonkd•27m ago
In general once or twice a month cleaners aren't hired to "tidy up", they deep clean.

a bit like the difference of brushing your teeth and going to a hygienist.

reaperducer•3m ago
Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket.

I knew a middle-aged waitress who had a cleaning woman come in every week or two.

After being on her feet for 10 hours dealing with jerks in a diner six days a week, she was too tired to do more than basic cleaning. The price was well worth it to her.

ShowalkKama•2m ago
>If you want a robot to do your chores

you mean like a dishwasher or a washing machine?

plagiarist•29m ago
Shift will record a point cloud of every object in your home for free.
necubi•26m ago
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...
mcmcmc•18m ago
I mean is it? At least the AirBnB owner has some recourse, any attempt to fight exploitation from “free services” goes nowhere
giwook•5m ago
The article specifically mentions at least one property owner who has been denied any recourse because of the lack of before/after photos (presumably before that specific rental).
mmmlinux•25m ago
Are these the same people that were renting airbnbs and wrecking them using them to train their robots?
janice1999•7m ago
Just a reminder: "Roomba testers feel misled after intimate images ended up on Facebook"

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-i...

janice1999•5m ago
... and also share those images with dozens of companies and potentially have those images leak online. Example: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/photos-robot-roomba-vacuum...
whodidntante•5m ago
The Audacity of these people

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143•watermelon0•5h ago•247 comments

Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/939765/ai-training-data-startup-shift-free-cl...
14•evilsimon•1h ago•22 comments

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Someone used my open source project to phish people

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186•NicoConstant•10h ago•84 comments

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30•vylorn•2h ago•23 comments

Durable execution, the hard way

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45•abelanger•1d ago•3 comments

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17•Cider9986•53m ago•3 comments