[htrp]

>Donovan alleges that employees of the Bot Company(opens in new tab) rented his home “under false pretenses” to conduct prototype testing on robots they’re training to do household chores.

>A refrigerator shelf was cracked, and a broken glass or dish had been left in the garbage disposal. A wooden nightstand drawer was chipped. Cups and plates were in the wrong places. It looked like the furniture had been moved around.

Not sure which one is worse, the fact that the bot can't actually do household chore or the fact that the humans can't clean it up.

[nxobject]

> “Sorry :( Did my best!” said a pithy message the group left on a whiteboard on his scuffed-up dining table.

Well, no wonder people don't have faith in the people selling AI.

[rdtsc]

Love that part. It really illustrates how incompetent these people are. That’s why the need for robots, they are projecting their incompetence on other people!

Also, if this is the best they can do and left such a mess, don’t let them operate robots or any machines! Teach them to use a mop and then maybe upgrade them to a vacuum, and if they pass, let them use a sink garbage disposal under adult supervision.

[close04]

The were incompetent enough to go to real world testing when these issues would have been obvious from a basic model kitchen test. Obviously their bot is in the very early development stages where it can't do any of the basic things right, they're nowhere near the phase where they needed real world testing. You don't need a real house to tell that your bot keeps damaging furniture, floors, and other items. You iron that out in the lab, then go in a real setup.

And yet they weren't able to build a model house or even just some model rooms for a controlled environment and practice there full time first. They could have done round the clock testing, with full flexibility of the arrangement, no need to waste time moving hardware around and risk damage, no liability, and more. A fake house costs next to nothing. A (fake) model kitchen is cheaper than an Airbnb stay.

Have you seen how many public demos from manufacturers of advanced robots like Boston Dynamics are using "artificial" obstacles and layouts? It's obvious they did a lot of development in those conditions. You don't need someone's home to find out if your robot can grab a plate without destroying it, or climb a flight of stairs.

[cpeterso]

The company could also test the bots in their employees’ homes for no cost. If employees aren’t comfortable with the bots in their own homes, then they shouldn’t let them loose in others’.

[jermaustin1]

I personally would not want my employer putting anything with an AI or camera inside my home. That would be a non-starter. And I work for a company that uses cameras and compvis.

I don't want any of my personal life observed by my professional life and vice versa. It is bad enough that /I/ have to observe both and try not to pass judgement on myself.

[true_religion]

CEO is also an employee and I bet they have second or third homes they would be happy to use to help their company stock price rise.

[21asdffdsa12]

Also obviously the money is running out when you rush to testing

[close04]

I think you're right and hope this stunt damages their valuation. As an investor I would have serious doubts about a company which at this stage doesn't have the brain or the money to have a proper development plan and resorts to desperately throwing anything out there, hijacking an Airbnb rental as their lab. That reeks of incompetence, maliciousness, and desperation rolled into one.

[sersi]

I was on the fence about investing in them and ultimately passed on it. Reading the article, glad I did so.

[reactordev]

That’s been true of EVERY AI company

[conartist6]

Tech now believes it should behave amorally

It reaches for people without morals, and instructs them to pursue profit without regard for morality.

I'm very, very, very glad to hear that these people are getting sued.

They should expect to feel a hostile world if they put their every effort into creating a hostile world

[Scroll_Swe]

I mean I have done this but I'm probably ADHD & Autistic

[randycupertino]

The irony is the company is trying to make robots to help clean airbnbs for renter turnovers. Instead they are messing up airbnbs and making them harder to clean before turnovers.

[est31]

It's fine to make mistakes, that's how you learn. The problem here was that they didn't announce to the host that they are doing a test of their in-development equipment.

So the host wasn't able to add the additional risk and hassle to the price, which in this instance would have been a quite legitimate ask as the robot damaged their revenue generating property.

It's very ironic that Airbnb itself has done similar practices in the past where it ignored hospitality regulations to establish their business model, i.e. not asking for permission but for forgiveness.

The Airbnb style response would be to gig-ify this model where you ask an independent contractor to buy the test robot, rent the Airbnb, and test it out instead of you doing it yourself. Then the contractor bears the risk of damages to the property.

[mrandish]

> The problem here was that they didn't announce to the host that they are doing a test of their in-development equipment.

I might be okay forgiving skirting the disclosure rules BUT only if they tried to be model tenants and, if there was any damage, took steps to proactively make things right. If you're breaking the rules, even if there was no damage, you should definitely be cleaning up and putting things back in place.

[RobotToaster]

This was my thought. I can understand not wanting to go to the hassle of trying to explain that you're testing an experimental prototype robot to a confused Airbnb owner.

What I find inexcusable is not owning up to the damage and paying to fix it when your prototype goes on a rampage of destruction.

Moving fast and breaking things is fine, as long as you fix the stuff you break...

[Barbing]

> We are backed by Greenoaks, NFDG, Spark, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, Y Combinator, and many others who

are too broke to pay for scratched furniture?

[Rebuff5007]

> Moving fast and breaking things is fine, as long as you fix the stuff you break...

What? No its not. Breaking things can cause harm that is not always "fixable", particularly if its not your thing to break.

[RobotToaster]

Well, that statement kinda implied what was broken has to be fixable, at least I thought it did.

And what is going to be impossible to fix or replace in a budget !hotel room?

[msh]

In a rental unit you should not have things that can’t be replaced. People who rent it will break things, either by accident or purpose (there are always idiots around).

[MagicMoonlight]

You don't need to rent someone else's house to test your robot. These people all live in houses.

[rapidaneurism]

But that like costs money and/or time.

[DonHopkins]

Should have signed up for Old Glory Robot Insurance.

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

[kjs3]

The problem here was that they didn't announce to the host that they are doing a test of their in-development equipment.

I personally think the problem here is that they were delusional enough to think this was the way to 'test' their prototype clean-o-bots. But as you point out (and...sigh...you're spot on on all points), we live in a world where doing things like beta-testing robo-cars in real live traffic is perfectly cromulent as long as you capture market share and outlast the lawsuits and 'disrupt' something.

[hn_throwaway_99]

It's exactly this ethos, the "move fast and break things", and oh, we don't give a fuck about who/what we damage in the process - careless people indeed.

I am someone who came of age during an incredibly hopeful time about how technology could be a force for good. The silicon valley ethos at present is totally morally bankrupt and rotten to the core.

[JsonDemWitOster]

Move fast and break things is an ethos borne out of the assumption that fixing things is relatively cheap. Hence it made sense in software where experimentation is dirt cheap. But even then, the idea is quite a stretch: ask anyone who worked in a startup who had to sell to even just SMEs, not to mention big conglomerates. The idea hits a hard wall and starts to crack when the business hits a customer who can't fix things for cheap. Even Zuck, father and posterboy of the idea, had to eventually pivot messaging to "Move fast with stable infra".

And the more "software eats the world", the less this paradigm is gonna be a feasible market strategy. I've harbored these thoughts from way back and hence I was (and continue to be) skeptical of unregulated start-ups/new tech ideas who interface with the real world: Hyperloop, Tesla self-driving, and Theranos come to mind. An interesting case study in my view is _Github_ who in theory, having software engineers for customers, should be pretty well-insulated from the expensive repair costs of the real world. And yet we'd all agree they need a GINORMOUS dose of that sweet sweet "stable infra".

[tclancy]

Same. Growing up Gen X, I always thought robots being used for evil would be cool dystopian dictatorships that would try to grind me under its boot but I would resist. Instead it’s just twerps who are so terminally online they can’t fathom other people seem to have feelings.

Now I’m getting even angrier imagining the email that went around internally on how to spin this and why it was a short term loss but will be for the long term good. Of trying to kill off the idea of cleaning people and then jacking up rates.

[elzbardico]

the banality of evil is a recurring theme in human history.

[tclancy]

Yes, but I was kinda hoping Hannah Arendt’s lessons had been internalized and we would progress. More the fool I.

[elzbardico]

One thing that I've been noticing more and more, is that it looks like every dystopic work of art, be it 1984, brave new world or idiocracy, ends up being used as an instruction manual.

So far we were implementing only the first two ones, with AI, it looks like we decided to accelerate Idiocracy implementation too.

[tclancy]

Same. The one that cemented it for me is The Matrix is only a quarter-century old, yet some people watched it and thought, "Oooh, good idea!" You can't even complain the context was gone.

[alasdair_]

Torment Nexus springs to mind

[inetknght]

> I always thought robots being used for evil would be cool dystopian dictatorships that would try to grind me under its boot but I would resist. Instead it’s just

It's... both.

[RobotToaster]

Moving fast and breaking things is fine, as long as you fix them and make things right.

If you break a production server you don't just leave it broken...

I'm assuming these companies have VC cash, so not just paying for repairs and risking negative publicity seems extremely foolish.

[cryo32]

No it's not. I hate normalising that approach.

Do things right is where we should be heading.

[staplers]

A good doc on this subject: https://machines.cargo.site/

[kortilla]

Cups and plates in the wrong places, the horror!! This generation is cooked. /s

I wonder why that was on the same level of complaints about broken things.

[maxbond]

No, this isn't a generational thing, if you don't see the problem with trashing someone's house (let alone doing so to the tune of $12k) that is a comment on your values alone.

[venzaspa]

But why don't they take the same money and get a cheap industrial unit and build some mock rooms up. Surely it costs the same as hiring and subsequently fixing peoples houses.

[kjs3]

If I'm supposed to buy a robot to clean my house, I personally don't want to have to go looking for where the stupid thing has put my cups and plates or whatever whenever it straightens up. I expect there to be a place for all the things and all the things to be put back in place. That's not "er mah gerd the world is ending because millennials am I right!"; that's "your idiot robot can't do the one job I bought it for".

[__s]

> refrigerator shelf was cracked ... broken glass or dish ... wooden nightstand drawer was chipped

[ianm218]

It sounds like they cost a couple hundred dollars in damages I’m not sure it damns a whole generation

[hansvm]

Well let's get right on that then. If you'd kindly share your address and those of your favorite friends and family, we'll go distribute a couple hundred in damages to each of them.

[freehorse]

Where was "a generation" mentioned? The "silicon valley ethos" is not a generational thing.