[johnfn]

I don't understand why my question was so controversial. Oftentimes on this website I feel like everyone is tapped into some polarizing news source that I am not, and so when I ask some (to my mind) benign question it's actually a secret tripwire that everyone is super polarized on and so rather than engaging in my question they all just tell me I am a moron. But I am seriously just asking a question here.

My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it).

OP said:

> Humanoid robots? Ain’t nobody made the business case for that. It is pure vibes.

I can't make sense of this. Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?

[darkwater]

> My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it).

The day that:

- displaced workforce issue is solved

- they cost less than 20k everything included, base model

- do all the processing locally in their HW

- are smaller and lighter than a human being (but can reach higher places)

- last 10 years at least

I will definitely buy one. I don't think I'm going to see this in my lifetime though (I'm in my 40's).

[f30e3dfed1c9]

"My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it)."

How much is "a lot of money"? Not picking on you, happy to let you want what you want, but people often seem to mention laundry, which mystifies me.

I am an adult male in the US. I do not need to dress for work in any way I would not dress anyway. Basically, I do two loads of laundry a week, one for clothes, one for towels and bedding.

This requires about one hour of actual work per week. More if we counted "waiting for the washing machine" and "waiting for the dryer" as work, but I don't.

How much would I pay to remove this hour a week of (really easy) work from my life? Almost nothing. I would not, for example, pay someone $50 to come to my house and do it for me. It's not a problem and doesn't need a solution.

So how much would you really pay for a robot that did your laundry, washed your dishes, and did other "dumb menial labor"?

[edmundsauto]

Reliably? $25k. Having kids means I have less time to do more chores, if I could convert those chore-hours to family quality time, it would be invaluable.

[f30e3dfed1c9]

I recognize that having kids too young to do their own laundry could change the calculus.

Maybe there will be a $25K robot that can do laundry before your kids grow up enough, but can't recommend holding your breath.

[bigyabai]

> Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?

Do you own a Roomba? I don't. It's a huge liability and doesn't do the cleaning I want out of it, even at a sub-$1000 price point. The humanoid robot is clunkier, more of a liability, and will still refuse to do certain tasks.

[sejje]

What makes the roomba a liability?

[lisdexan]

> Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?

This is called having a live-in maid or a cleaning service. Even in the first-world, where there isn't a disfranchised rural population to provide cheap labor to the middle class (e.g. Philippines, most of LATAM 20 years ago) the service will be cheaper than the price of a vaporware bot [0]. Now, you might say the droid is cheaper if you want a live-in maid in HCOL area, but have in mind that this thing barely can fold clothes and fill a dishwasher (an actual domestic bot). Also it sometimes is actually a dude controlling it remotely.

We would need bots of the level of that awful I Robot movie with Will Smith.

[0] https://www.1x.tech/order

[sejje]

And another thought: if the robot can do housework, can it do factory work? Fieldwork? Lawn care? What else can it do with zero modifications?

That expands the market greatly.

[pavlov]

You couldn't pay me any amount of money to have a robot in my home if it's controlled from Elon Musk's data center.

And I'm a former Tesla FSD customer, so I should be the ideal early adopter for this product.

[adastra22]

No, I wouldn’t.

For one, I don’t spend a lot of time doing housework. Just organize your life better.

Beyond that, the cost would not be small. Based on current designs, operating costs would be thousands of dollars per month. I would not pay that.

It would require a cloud controlled robot with cameras in my home. Why in the world would I want that.

Finally, I already have dishwashers and laundry machines.

[sejje]

Why thousands per month?

Why would cloud connectivity be required? (I'm almost certain you're right, the big makers will require cloud--but that's not a requirement of the tech, is it?)

[adastra22]

There is insufficient compute to operate these things locally in dynamic environments. The models for doing that kind of robotics inference are running on racks of H200’s.

[johnfn]

> Just organize your life better.

Do you really think this is a viable solution to families with kids?

[ulfw]

> My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor.

Then why don't you hire a helper for that? You just said you'd pay a lot of money, so money doesn't seem to be an issue. What is then?

[sejje]

I can't speak for the other guy, but as a person who manages humans at work: I'd rather have a robot at home.

1) I live way, way out in the middle of nowhere.

2) Humans are fickle, late, emotional. They have requirements in their own life that conflict with the jobs I want them to do.

3) Taxes. I don't want to deal with this headache. 1099 my cleaner or whatever?

4) In my version, the costs of owning the robot are less than the costs of hiring humans. If that wasn't true, then I'd reconsider. I probably wouldn't buy one until the cost switched like that, unless maybe it was open-source or something.

Here's another way to think about it: Amazon is willing to pay workers to do the job, but they'd obviously rather have the robots do it. The robots work close to free, don't complain, and probably do a better job (at the jobs they're capable of). Why wouldn't they hire a human for that? A lot of the same reasons.

[fragmede]

FWIW, I emailed auntanns.com to ask what a combination personal assistant and housekeeper would cost:

> Thank you for inquiring about our services. I'd love to discuss with you further regarding the person you are seeking. Personal assistants do not do housekeeping and housekeepers do not have the P.A skillset to pay bills and make appts etc unless they are an executive level housekeeper. Rates for executive housekeepers range between $60-$65/hr and a minimum of 20+ hours per week, plus PTO, paid sick days and many also seek a health stipend.

[sib]

It costs approximately $200 for our house to be cleaned once (by humans). We do it about once a month because we don't feel like spending $200 weekly). It would be great to have it ~continuously cleaned but we the cost/benefit isn't there for having a full-time person.

[the_other]

Do you already pay a human to do this work?

[johnfn]

I absolutely pay to have a maid come over and clean, yes.

[ted_dunning]

You would pay "a lot of money"?

Like, more than the cost of your house? For something that can't do those things right and has to be supervised? To a company that can't deliver product on time?

[sejje]

Aren't the humanoid robots looking to ship around 20k?

You can hardly even buy a reliable new car for that amount.

[sib]

The average new car in the US is now ~$50K.