Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

p1esk

Where do I sign up?

sublinear

> 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.

sonofhans

”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.

hsnv

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.

plagiarist

Shift will record a point cloud of every object in your home for free.

necubi

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...

mmmlinux

Are these the same people that were renting airbnbs and wrecking them using them to train their robots?

janice1999

Just a reminder: "Roomba testers feel misled after intimate images ended up on Facebook" https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-i...

aleyan

"I always thought that Homejoy were planning to automate as much as possible, if not everything, related to cleaning services using robotics and stuff, and that humans were only a temporary measure while developing technology." -devgutt 2015 [0] This quote about robots doing home cleaning has been living in my head rent free, and refusing to cleanup after itself, for over a decade. It seemed so crazy to me in 2015 that anyone would seriously consider home cleaning robots to be on a realistic timeline. Yet here we are in 2026 and robots could plausibly clean our homes beyond vacuuming and mopping. Humans training robots now completely makes sense to me. I think Sunday Robotics use of people wearing "skill capture gloves" [1] that both capture data and limit range of motion to that of the robotic hands is particularly clever. I wish success to both these and other companies in the space, so that someday soon there will be just a little fewer housework around the house, and we move a bit closer to the Jetsons. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9986693 [1] https://youtu.be/QeVnwtCANZ8?si=JoSps5MCxs7zPp0f&t=33

stickfigure

Seems like a relevant time to post this Danny Gonzales video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N24UqL389rs You will be amused.

AlexandrB

Lol, not a chance. I'm sure whatever agreement you click through when you agree to this has all kinds of limitations on liability and an arbitration clause, so when they leave pictures of your house in an open S3 bucket you have no recourse to seek compensation. I'd rather let a stranger off the street live in my house - at least they have human emotions like shame.

darth_avocado

Even if somehow this was a good idea, it seems like an expensive way to do it when apparently in they are already doing it for much cheaper in India. https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/26/human-archive-taps-into-in...

fortran77

I'm not bothered by a lot of tech that other's object to. I'm fine with having an Alex in my house, a connected car, Microsoft Windows. But I can't imagine consenting to _this_. There's too much personal data the can inadvertently collect, and too little oversight with little upside for me.

ChrisArchitect

Related/unrelated? Airbnb host alleges $12k in damages after SF startup tested a robot in his house https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317093

rglover

Ha! My wife just asked me about a random job she found on Craigslist the other day. It was for what looked like a shell company, offering $10/hr to have you strap a camera to your head while you do specific chores like laundry, dishes, etc. She asked me what I thought it was and I said "someone is farming training data." Turns out.

somethoughts

It would seem like such an obvious win-win if these cleaning robotics companies just won a couple of contracts with some tech forward hotel chains. - Faster R&D since hotel rooms are regular/familiar - Cost center for hotels so revenue would be higher/straightforward - No privacy issues since robots would not be present in rooms with guests - Easier servicing/maintenance since multiple robots at same location

deweywsu

And so it begins; even the blue collar jobs aren't safe.

jdubs1984

Shift will file for bankruptcy

LowLevelKernel

Who is funding this? Can I wear that cap and clean my own house and get paid if I share the video?

lucaspiller

If training robots doesn't pan out, they could always pivot and use the data to train AI to control humans instead. Some industries such as Amazon warehouse pickers and drivers are effectively already this. https://marshallbrain.com/manna1