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SF startup is testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims
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- starkparker 4mo agoso, so close to having people legitimately and earnestly start saying "we don't serve their kind here" while gesturing to humanoid robots
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- fidotron 4mo agoHuman only "safe spaces" will be a thing. Where they draw the line will be the question.
- chatmasta 4mo agoThese bots are going to arrive suddenly and in huge volume. I’m not sure when it will happen, but when it does, it will be extremely fast. The software is basically ready, and the hardware isn’t too far off. The processing latency will be problematic but with local inference improving quickly, this will all come together into the perfect storm for the arrival of the bot army. I don’t think any of us are prepared for it.
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- kibwen 4mo agoNo, neither the hardware nor software is anywhere even remotely ready, where by "ready" we mean "safe to share living spaces with unsupervised children and pets without EVER accidentally reducing your toddler to a fine paste, literally a 0% chance". That's the minimum that people will accept, and that's more than ten years away, if it ever happens.
- egypturnash 4mo agoGood news, the current apocalyptic memory prices will mean that only apocalyptically rich people will be able to afford them at the toddler-pasting stage if they come out any time soon!
- fragmede 4mo agoMeanwhile, there's a tired mom of triplets who's wondering "how fine? (a paste)"
- Animats 4mo agoBoth of the preceding comments are true. These things are about to arrive in vast volume, because the factories to build them are already starting to run. And they're nowhere near ready for that. It took over a decade for Waymo to get from "able to drive around SF for demos" to "3x safer than humans, with thousands of vehicles on the roads". A lot of these things may end up in closets, next to the VR headset and the 3D TV.
- pjc50 4mo agoYou'd be surprised. I think Waymo have already proven this; not perfectly safe, but below the care threshold. And the demand for childcare is huge. Of course, what then happens is how the ensuing child neglect case falls out. We're probably going to end up with the situation where the burden "it is considered criminal child endangerment to leave your child alone with the robot" falls on the parents, not on the robot manufacturers.
- gamblor956 4mo agoThat's not how product liability laws work in the U.S. or in the E.U. The first time a child gets harmed by a robot, the company making that robot will go spectacularly bankrupt. If a child gets killed by a robot, it would likely end the consumer robotics industry for a decade or more.
- robotresearcher 4mo agoThe software is not basically ready. You’ll see actually good demos long before it’s really ready, and we haven’t seen them yet.
- gamblor956 4mo agoRobot vacuums have been around for a decade now. Some are apparently decent. Nobody really cares. Robot vacuums are still a single digit % of the vacuum market. It turns out that saving a few minutes on housework isn't something people are willing to spend thousands, or even hundreds, of dollars on when the cheaper options are more versatile and more robust.
- chatmasta 4mo agoI would pay $10k for a robot that wakes up when I leave for work, does all the household chores, then goes to sleep before I return home to a house with dishes cleaned and put away, clothes washed and folded, clutter organized, surfaces cleaned, floors vacuumed and climate exactly how I want it… I absolutely hate doing these chores to the point I rarely do them and go through cycles of two weeks of gradually disorganized living space until I finally crack and spend two hours gritting my teeth to poorly execute the chores. I should hire a cleaner to come every two weeks, but that’s a chore too. I’d rather order a robot from Amazon, take it out of the box and have my problems solved.
- gamblor956 4mo agoMost people don't have thousands of dollars lying around to purchase a robot. The market of people who have that sort of money to spend on a discretionary purchase of that magnitude is in the low 6 figures globally. That tech bros glibly assume that a freakishly expensive appliance is everybody's must-buy is part of why most people now have extremely strong negative feelings toward tech.
- toss1 4mo agoIf the morally bankrupt SV techs aren't careful, the line will be "Shoot the damn things on sight", and then there will be a bounty on them.
- elzbardico 4mo agoThe billionaires will still be mostly served by humans, probably former SWEs as the oligarchs will find all this situation amusingly entertaining. Of course, the're will be a few robot dogs patrolling the fences and hidden behind closets on the rare occasions the servants decide to rebel.
- Animats 4mo agoSouthwest Airlines just banned humanoid robots on their flights.[1] [1] https://aeronauticsmagazine.com/news/no-robots-allowed-southwest-bans-humanoid-devices-after-passengers-robot-flies-from-las-vegas-to-dallas https://aeronauticsmagazine.com/news/no-robots-allowed-south...
- aaron695 4mo ago[dead]
- htrp 4mo ago>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.
- hn_throwaway_99 4mo agoIt'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.
- s5300 4mo ago[dead]
- tclancy 4mo agoSame. 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.
- inetknght 4mo ago> 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.
- Grimblewald 4mo ago[flagged]
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- gbgarbeb 4mo ago$13,000 in damage you say? Where have I heard that number before... [1] Keep it real, Kyle. It doesn't seem like you learned anything from the failure of your last company. [1] https://weartv.com/news/local/report-pensacola-woman-charged-after-urinating-on-furniture-at-2-downtown-airbnb-homes https://weartv.com/news/local/report-pensacola-woman-charged...
- TZubiri 4mo ago$12,383.50 Which is below the CA 12,500$ limit for small claims court. Haven't checked whether the case was brought to small claims, but that'd be my guess.
- fjni 4mo ago> Founded by alums of Tesla and the autonomous vehicle company Cruise, the San Francisco startup has received hundreds of millions in venture capital funding and is valued at $2 billion Stop outsourcing the cost of your vision to the rest of society. Especially when it’s peanuts to you and meaningful to, in this case, the host of what they call an apartment and you seem to think is a test course.
- ssl-3 4mo agoI mean, it's good that they're testing things in different places. Environments vary. But hundreds of millions sounds like enough money to get some industrial or dead commercial space (even in/around SF) and outfit it to be like an apartment. Or six different ones, and six others two weeks from now, and two weeks after that. The cost of the space and the carpenters/painters/drywallers/handymen/managers/whatevers would seem to be something of such relative insignificance that it doesn't even show up on the budgetary radar.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoThey want realistic randomness in the apartment layouts. This is a quick, effective way to get that. If they were honest with the hosts, it wouldn’t even be a bad idea.
- stephenhuey 4mo ago[flagged]
- maxbond 4mo agoI don't think GP disagrees with you. They said it wouldn't be a good idea if they had been honest. Elsewhere they call for the employees to face charges.
- stephenhuey 4mo agoAh, I see. Pardon me making him a scapegoat. My rant in between bouts of wrestling with mobile sandbox subscription testing weirdness should have been directed at a vague cohort of less considerate SV folks, so instead I wish to thank him for trying to make the world a better place, and I wouldn't mind if he invited me skiing or flying sometime so we can discuss how I can help him make the world a better place. :)
- TZubiri 4mo agoCan any lawyer clear this up for me? If the company ends up having no commercial success and the lawsuits for damages rack up, can they just close the company file for bankruptcy and face no consequences? Or is there some civil or criminal risk to this behaviour?
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoDid an individual or the company rent the Airbnb?
- ChoGGi 4mo agoFrom the article it sounds like an individual did.
- qiqitori 4mo agoHmm? Airbnb isn't on the hook?
- jfengel 4mo agoOfficers of the company can be at risk under certain very poorly defined circumstances. Basically, you have to prove that they personally were at fault and were just using the company as a legal cover for their misdeeds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil If this were happening in the real world, they would have to personally back some of the corporate debts before banks would lend them money. But this is Silicon Valley, where banks and VCs just give away money to their buddies.
- Borealid 4mo agoAs a slight hint, one of the more common types of corporation is an "LLC". LLC stands for Limited Liability Company. If the company's owners had unlimited liability for problems the company caused, that wouldn't be much of an LLC, would it? The primary purpose of an LLC is to make it so that the owners (often the founders) cannot personally be held responsible for debts the company incurs, even debts incurred through their instructions. This also includes debts caused by punishment for the company breaking civil contracts, but doesn't make individuals who use the company to break the law immune to criminal charges. But the standard of evidence for prosecuting that type of malfeasance is pretty high...
- redsocksfan45 4mo ago[dead]
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoThe only way to stop this is for charges to be brought against the employees who made the bookings under false pretenses.
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- bluefirebrand 4mo agoWhy the employees? Do you think they were operating without direction from their managers? If we want to put a stop to this sort of behavior from businesses we can't be punishing employees for this behavior, we have to run it up the chain.
- kibwen 4mo agoYou are, in fact, allowed to hate both the player and the game. It is long established that "just following orders" is not a defense.
- SequoiaHope 4mo agoI don’t know if the concept of the Nuremberg defense is really applicable to, you know, basic property damage.
- inetknght 4mo agoReally? You might want to ask most contractors, or contract lawyers, about that. "I was just following orders" for basic property damage typically doesn't hold up in court for them either.
- maxbond 4mo agoI don't understand the alternative, that it would be legal to break the law as long as it were a petty crime and you were being paid to do it? It's a principle, it applies broadly. We tend to think about it in terms of the most dramatic and memorable example but that's neither here nor there.
- deckar01 4mo ago> He looked through a window and saw black cables taped to the walls. A man was typing on a laptop sitting next to what appeared to be a robot. This sounds a lot like criminal invasion of privacy. Edit: What are you downvoting? You can’t secretly watch Airbnb guests through a window you rented to them for the same reason you can’t put spy cameras in their bathroom.
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- Psillisp 4mo agoSounds like looking though a window.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> You can’t secretly watch Airbnb guests through a window Systematically? No. Casually? Of course you can. Why wouldn’t you be allowed to? These aren’t corporate landlords, after all.
- deckar01 4mo ago> The “Peeping Tom” Laws Penal Code 647(j) explicitly states it is not a defense to this charge that the defendant is a cohabitant, landlord, tenant, cotenant, employer, employee, or business partner or associate of the victim. https://kelmanskylaw.com/crimes/peeping-tom-law-pc-647j-ca/ https://kelmanskylaw.com/crimes/peeping-tom-law-pc-647j-ca/
- card_zero 4mo agoHere the "reasonable expectation of privacy" is not because they were in the nude, but because they were secretly using your home to test clumsy robots and wouldn't like to be caught.
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- 866-RON-0-FEZ 4mo agoDid the host leave them fresh-baked cookies and an open invitation to "hang out"?
- nickvec 4mo agoPretty disgusting behavior. Total lack of respect for others property. The individuals should be named and shamed for participating rather than putting it under the umbrella of the Bot Company.
- iknowstuff 4mo agoThe fact that this made it to the news cycle is indicative enough of the airbnb owner smelling money once they found out a robotics company is involved, regardless of the extent of damage/wear
- add-sub-mul-div 4mo agoThis kind of simping is surely indicative of something.
- rsynnott 4mo agoEh? This sort of corporate misbehaviour would obviously make the news; it’s both scummy and just bizarre. That makes for good news.
- iknowstuff 4mo agoHow does it make it to a reporter?
- markalby 4mo ago[dead]
- solfox 4mo agoKnowing the cost of home ownership, it’s not unlikely to imagine the reported damages are well within what he’s asking. Given that repair work, filing paper with the courts, etc is a major PITA, if this guy was just looking for a payout you’d think he’d ask for a lot more.
- solfox 4mo agoDoubtful these clowns even have commercial insurance for these rentals. What a deceitful and dangerous way to build a business - to save (what?) a few thousand per rental?
- jmyeet 4mo agoThis is just the most perfect Silicon Valley microcosm. How many startups work is they simply break the law. The gamble is that you can get big enough fast enough that you can then lobby for a change in the law before governments catch up. Uber and Airbnb are like the posterchildren for this. Taxi services are regulated. You can't run an illegal hotel in a residential area. Simple. So what we have here is another company who doesn't want to make a test kitchen or house. No, that's too expensive. So they'll instead use another startup to effectively steal a lab. It's layers upon layers of illegality, basically. So if this succeeds and this company creates waves of domestic robots, we can then start to imagine what the next layer is. Will somebody rent an Airbnb with domestic robots so it can then sublet those robots to somebody else or use them for tasks they weren't designed for?
- thfuran 4mo agoIf it can clean a kitchen, it can cook meth. Probably.
- maxbond 4mo ago"Move fast and break other people's things."
- jollyllama 4mo agoIt's an interesting approach to the fact that navigation in human spaces is very difficult to generalize, which is probably the main reason that robotics has lagged, say drones.
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- mvdtnz 4mo agoThis is not Donovan's "home", as the article states. It's his house and rental business. And he was snooping on his guests when he was taking the rubbish bins out and happened to notice cables and people typing on laptops inside the house - which I'm sure is an explicit violation of Airbnb policies.
- input_sh 4mo ago> Hosts are allowed to have exterior security cameras and recording devices, and are required to make sure their location is disclosed in the listing’s description (ex: “I have a camera in my front yard,” “I have a camera over my patio,” “I have a camera over my pool” or “I have a doorbell camera monitoring my front door and the hallway of my apartment building.”) https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/3061 https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/3061
- weird-eye-issue 4mo agoHow could seeing people in a house from a public area possibly be an explicit violation of policies?
- ChoGGi 4mo agoThey turned off his security cameras so he went to take a look. At least that's the impression I got. I'm a little surprised he didn't knock and ask to go in.
- andy_ppp 4mo agoMove fast and break other people’s things?
- syntaxing 4mo agoMoral issues aside, this is a pretty clever way to get a wide variety of training data
- DonHopkins 4mo agoThat guy definitely fucks that robot, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7sd_yhc8IY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7sd_yhc8IY Yeah.
- gamblor956 4mo agoFor the record, this is another YCombinator startup... At some point does morality ever enter the equation, or does YC deliberately go out of its way to select people with utter disregard for the laws or rights of other people?
- Bluescreenbuddy 4mo agoGood. Fuck AirBNBs
- akabul0us 4mo ago"Won't somebody think of the poor San Francisco AirBnB owners who spy on their renters through Ring cameras??" Everyone in this story is a complete piece of shit. Zero sympathy for any of them.
- anordin95 4mo agoThe CEO of this startup was also the CEO of Cruise during the scandal in which Cruise hit a pedestrian, lied and heavily misrepresented evidence to CA investigators. Ethically jarring upgraded to just ethically dubious?