I like roombas, they’re like little detrivorous animals. In the right space they can be very helpful gathering dust for you to dump. Like catfish in an aquarium…they don’t at all mean it doesn’t need cleaning but do a great job scrubbing off algae for you.
I’d suggest that for the foreseeable future that is the kind of level to expect from robots – helper animals. Maybe some more advanced than roombas, although I think their simplicity is a big part of why they actually work. But if you don’t think it’s a job that could be done by a pet, don’t imagine you can get rid of the people.
Keeping a home clean takes work. An office with dozens of people, including bathrooms, takes more. The idea you can get by without it is nonsense.
I think that Elon is the one that really has to worry, since GPT is very good at taking in actual writing and generating nonsense that sounds good, but falls apart if looked at too closely. He could be out of a job immediately
I’m glad you like yours because ours does a crappy job. Got it as a gift, would not recommend. We still have to still manually vacuum or Swiffer because the stupid robot can’t vacuum corners, under or behind cabinets. It goes over the same spots 20x and misses sections of the room.
Oh my gosh, I’ve written those lists, agreed to them, negotiated them, and supervised people to complete them for more than 30 years, there ain’t no robot anywhere anytime that could replace any of that. It’s such a headache and I’m a teeny tiny micro business that services/serviced other small businesses.
The other thing a robot can’t do is answer the phone call on Monday morning from an office worker wanting to know what I did with their reading glasses.
We don’t do much daily office cleaning anymore because when the economy took a dump back in 2008,9,10 office cleaning was a luxury and we were the first to go. As things got better they started calling back but we had moved on. We only have two left because they are very good customers and have treated us well for those 30+ years.
I wonder if it’s not robots that will do the work but the actual office workers that will be responsible for cleaning their own work area and bathrooms. Good luck with that.
And, dick move laying off or firing anyone during the holidays. Unless of course you deserve to be fired.
Years ago we used to clean my wife’s nephew’s engineering company, he was pretty anal about the cleaning and bought a Roomba for the days we weren’t in there. We came in one Sunday and caught the Roomba corrupting the regular vacuums with an after hours Christmas party. This amused me more than it amused him.
The other day mine was alerting me for help because it had rolled under the window curtains and could no longer see… AI peek a boo.
And I have to make sure everything is out of its way. And I have to make sure the cat didn’t leave any mess for the roomba to drag around the house.
And I have to make sure there are no errant cords on the floor.
And there are spots all over the house that still need to be done by human.
Roombas can be better designed to overcome these things but then the cost and maintenance increases.
I do like the Roomba though, but if it broke I’m unsure I would get another one.
I think everyone getting replaced by robots is a lot of flying cars on Mars wishful thinking. Humans have always been over promising technology.
I also envision a lot of future automation existing within its own sandbox. Instead of a robot to clean the bathroom, the bathroom is going to clean itself… we already have this and it’s still not widely used.
Well we do have plutonium-powered self-driving cars there that can launch flying drones, which is pretty neat. But point taken, they won’t be scrubbing bathrooms or emptying wastebaskets any time soon.
Hey, I remember this “Twilight Zone” episode! The company owner replaces all his employees with robots. Then the main robot determines that the owner himself is obsolete and is replaced. Ooh, I can’t wait…
Well, I guess you’d take something like a pool cleaning robot- which I think is a thing now- and shrink it down to the size of an Oreo or something. But yeah, our household would love a toilet-ba (heck, while I’m asking for crazy things, a sink-ba/tub-ba would be nice too).
