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> robot maid that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, etc. would be huge. I think a lot of people would pay new-car money for something like
by OtherShrezzing 4mo ago
> robot maid that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, etc. would be huge. I think a lot of people would pay new-car money for something like that.
Once you take maintenance of a machine with price-parity to a new car into consideration, it’s surely cost competitive to just hire a human to do all those things.
The price needs to fall drastically below new-car territory before it’s competitive with manual human labour.
- Forgeties79 4mo agoIf you're paying cash/under the table, then maybe. But even then a twice a week household cleaning hire is going to cost upwards of $1500/mo unless you're being particularly exploitative. If you're not under the table, you're paying payroll taxes, probably paying for a payroll service, etc. so you're talking $2000+. At best you can maybe stay under $20k a year. When you really look at the economics of it, a robot that never gets sick/doesn't require payroll/etc. makes a lot more sense.
- dh2022 4mo agoWho spends new-car money to clean their homes? Maybe ultra high net worth individuals? I know people with 8 figures net worth who spend a fraction of that money for cleaning their homes.
- Danox 4mo agoNone...
- Forgeties79 4mo agoGiven the current context the presumption would be you have somebody coming 2 to 3 days a week. Are you telling me somebody’s going to come work for you for less than $100 a day 2-3 days a week? Why would they even take the gig?
- dh2022 4mo agoMy point is even 8 figures net worth individuals do not pay for someone to clean their house 2-3 times a week.
- Forgeties79 4mo agoWe set a bar for income brackets here as well as decided this is just for individuals?
- RussianCow 4mo ago> But even then a twice a week household cleaning hire is going to cost upwards of $1500/mo unless you're being particularly exploitative. Sorry, what? Unless you're doing a deep clean of your house twice a week or you live in a particularly HCOL area, those numbers don't add up. You shouldn't be spending more than $1k/month on household chores, and even that seems high. Source: A client of ours runs a "personal help" service (mostly focused on household tasks like laundry, tidying, organizing, etc as opposed to deep cleaning) so I have a lot of data on this. And they're a relatively premium service compared to some of the cheap labor you can actually buy. But they also don't operate in SF or NYC, so maybe prices are drastically different there.
- midnightclubbed 4mo agoEven in high cost of living coastal Southern California these numbers are insane unless you have a $10mil house with 10,000sqft
- what 4mo agoNot really? I pay $40/h, it takes them 4 hours to clean a 4 bed/2 bath. I do it once a month, but they’re talking twice a week.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Forgeties79 4mo agoThen tell me what you think it would cost. Hourly pay, how many hours they’d work in a day, and how many days a month you would expect them. What would be the monthly cost for the kind of help you are envisioning?
- seanmcdirmid 4mo ago$1k/month in an HCOL like here in Seattle doesn't give you much: > In Seattle, hiring a house cleaner typically costs $150 to $500+ per visit, with most recurring standard cleanings for an average-sized home landing between $180 and $300. If you pay by the hour, rates generally range from $45 to $65 per hour for self-employed independent cleaners and $75 to $125 per hour for professional cleaning companies.
- midnightclubbed 4mo agoThis comment seems insane to me. Like at $50 an hour thats 30 hours a month, or 8 hoursish a week. How dirty or huge is the house? And $50 an hour is way over what most hourly degree edgucated workers earn so definitely not exploitation.
- what 4mo agoI pay $40/h for 4 hours once a month. If the wife had her way, it would be weekly.
- devilbunny 4mo agoBut presumably would not be for four hours a week, since they would do more maintenance-like cleaning. Once a month, yeah, it’s going to take that long.
- Forgeties79 4mo agoWhy wouldn’t it take that long? When you hire people to do housekeeping they don’t just come for the exact amount of time you need them on an infrequent, case by case basis. You generally have to agree to a standard number of hours and days or a flat rate per day. They’re trying to make a living. If you can’t give them consistency and a meaningful amount of hours, they won’t work for you (or only will temporarily). They will find someone else who can provide more stability. All that being said, what do you think this will cost? Several of you are scoffing at my numbers but I am very curious what you think they will leave their house for on a daily basis and how many days a month they would be coming by. Plus all the taxes and such that come with doing it legally. If we’re trying to compare this to some sort of robot that does all your chores, then we have to at least start at 3 days a week. I’d compromise at 2 I guess but 8 days a month doesn’t seem like a fair comparison to a full-time robot chore handler.
- devilbunny 4mo agoIf you clean a house once a month, it will take longer than doing the same thing once a week. You will end up spending more hours total, but it won't be four hours per visit, more like one or two. You spread the tasks out. Clean kitchen and den one visit. Clean bedrooms one visit. Clean bathrooms one visit. Or whatever. The total cleaning time (and thus price) goes up, but it's not 4x what you're getting now, which a whole-house cleaning once a month would be.
- calvinmorrison 4mo agomaintenance cost of machines is largely driven by human labor cost
- mattmanser 4mo agoIt's robots all the way down.
- gastonmorixe 4mo agounless you need rare earths (or any short supply / scarse resource)
- calvinmorrison 4mo agoextraction of which is driven by.......?
- fragmede 4mo agoHumans are messy to deal with. Say you're rich enough to afford a personal chef. Unless you're an inhuman monster, their problems become your problems as well. So if your chef is out because their mother is sick and needs someone to take care of her, you pay for a nurse for your chef's mom, so that you have your chef. A robot servant is still gonna need maintenance, sure, but it's a bit easier to be callous to a robot than a person.
- ian-g 4mo agoI think that’s a feature. Not a bug.
- queueueue 4mo agoBut for now, humanoids are still relatively incompetent. So if you're rich enough and you want things done like cleaning and cooking, it's more convenient to hire a human and give them specific instructions instead of buying a robot that can currently do only half the things they want to get done. Or they just want a nice gadget.
- Benlovescnn 4mo ago>but it's a bit easier to be callous to a robot than a person. George Jetson always dreamed of beating a robot chef/maid.
- Reason077 4mo ago> ”it’s surely cost competitive to just hire a human to do all those things.” The cost of labour varies hugely in different parts of the world. The cost of hiring someone in Switzerland is on the order of 100X more expensive compared to Bangladesh, for example. With many countries currently in an anti-immigration political mindset and with birth rates declining globally, labour costs are likely to continue to increase in the future. But once a technology like general-purpose humanoid robotics exists, it’s costs are only likely to decrease over time.
- addaon 4mo ago> it’s costs are only likely to decrease over time What is this based on? We're well past a 50-ish year deflationary period in the cost of major appliances (refrigerators, washing machines, etc). We're pretty clearly at or near the end of the deflationary era for computers and computation. Automotive... speaks for itself. We're still there for televisions, surprisingly; but it looks like these technologies tend to have a handful of decades of rapid cost decrease, followed by a never-ending cost increase over time as the manufacturers consolidate and claim an ever-increasing margin.
- seanmcdirmid 4mo agoThe computer of 10 years ago is still a lot cheaper than a modern model. Deflation stops basically only if hardware advancement stops. EVs are a great example: they keep getting cheaper for what they provide, even if the price stays the same. 200 miles of range 5 years ago is now 400+ miles of range today. Compared to ICEs, where advancement has stalled for the last 20 years, which seem like a worse deal every year.
- jen20 4mo ago> Compared to ICEs, where advancement has stalled for the last 20 years, It hasn't really stalled: VVT, VCR, Cylinder deactivation that works properly, and start-stop becoming commonplace are all meaningful improvements (though smaller than the ones seen in EVs over the same time frame, which makes sense given the relative maturity).
- greggsy 4mo agoPrice aside, the more important factor is that we don’t have the repair infrastructure to make something like this worthwhile yet. For something as critical as a car, we have workshops, spare parts supply chains, and the skilled technicians to do the repairs. Conventional robots require a similar skill set, but you still won’t be able to rely on a local repair for something people would expect to be dependable, like aged care or home assistance.
- to11mtm 4mo ago> it’s surely cost competitive to just hire a human to do all those things. Depends on the service life/performance/etc. As a simple benchmark, I will propose 'Mowing the lawn with a push mower'. Let's wave hands and assume there is a setup on a truck where the mower can be parked and then lifted in. If you're paying the people doing that lawn-mowing federal minimum wage, at 40 hours a week it's 15K/year. After 3 years that's 45K, or a little under the current US median price of a new car. IOW, if the robot costs 45-50K, but can make it through 4 years without expensive maintenance you are still 'saving costs'. There's hand-waving on both sides of my equation; At least where I live even pushing a lawnmower gets you a bit more than minimum wage (although it is more seasonal,) and also I have no clue if when we say 'new car territory' we are talking median or an 80K EV.
- nonethewiser 4mo agoA new car is what, $25-50K? Thats a one time cost. How much do you think youd need to pay a maid every year to do your cooking, cleaning, laundry, dirty dishes etc? Coming once a day for 2 hours would be very expensive and still wouldnt be comparable to a robot that you own and is constantly deployed. And at that point you’re probably comparing owning a robot to renting one.
- prmoustache 4mo agoMost people buying a new car don't pay them in one payment, they either lease or credit. A car has a number of periodic maintenance to do + in most country some tax and some yearly technical inspection. This is non counting the energy required by that car, electricity or gasoline
- davely 4mo agoWith the way subscription models and terms of use have been evolving over time, even if you buy a futuristic robotic assistant outright, you won’t really “own” it.
- JKCalhoun 4mo ago"A new car is what, $25-50K?" Apparently $50K is closer to average in the U.S.
- prepend 4mo agoBut a robot is much better than a human for these tasks. I feel uncomfortable paying a person to come to my house every day and clean. But a soulless robot, I don’t mind. Same for an in house private chef. Etc etc. Also, like 10 neighbors could potentially share a robot and have it just go house to house every day.
- foobarian 4mo agoSee what you do is make it tele-operated. That way there is no stranger physically in your house, but technologically it's a lot easier to implement than some grand challenge-level laundry folding AI.
- Alien1Being 4mo agoAround $80 - $100 an hour here in Sydney.