It would allow elderly to regain a certain amount of independence. Often they start having trouble with just 1 or 2 of these tasks, but then a home health aide is needed or they have to get put in a nursing home. The cost of this kind of care is $5000 - $20k a month. So there's a lot of money on the table for a good robot.
Cleaning your ass or helping you shower is magnitudes more sensitive and complex
I changed a lot of diapers.
https://www.quora.com/?qv_src=email
>Q: Can an “AI command line” replace the GUI as the primary user experience for computers, assuming the technology improves and irrespective of today’s state?
>A: Alan Kay -- Still trying to learn how to think better (May 26, 2026)
>The “related questions” have interesting slants — some of which make more or less sense.
>I think most people should be able to answer this for themselves if they look at this from a number of different angles.
>One is that we have multiple ways of “perceiving”, “knowing”, “learning”, etc. — for example by touch, sound, vision, symbolic representations, abstract languagues, etc. Besides inventing interactive computer graphics, Ivan Sutherland pointed out (in a famous 1964 paper) that “the ultimate display” should be able to do every kind of I/O that humans can do and experience. His famous last line with typical Ivan humor was “In the ultimate display, a simulated bullet would be fatal to its operator”!
[...]
----
The Ultimate Display -- Ivan E. Sutherland (Jan 1, 1965)
https://scispace.com/papers/the-ultimate-display-35zd3b9ucp
>TL;DR: The authors live in a physical world whose properties they have come to know well through long familiarity but lack corresponding familiarity with the forces on charged particles, forces in non-uniform fields, the effects of nonprojective geometric transformations, and high-inertia, low friction motion.
>Abstract: We live in a physical world whose properties we have come to know well through long familiarity. We sense an involvement with this physical world which gives us the ability to predict its properties well. For example, we can predict where objects will fall, how well-known shapes look from other angles, and how much force is required to push objects against friction. We lack corresponding familiarity with the forces on charged particles, forces in non-uniform fields, the effects of nonprojective geometric transformations, and high-inertia, low friction motion.
>A display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarity with concepts not realizable in the physical world. It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland. Computer displays today cover a variety of capabilities. Some have only the fundamental ability to plot dots. Displays being sold now generally have built in line-drawing capability. An ability to draw simple curves would be useful. Some available displays are able to plot very short line segments in arbitrary directions, to form characters or more complex curves. Each of these abilities has a history and a known utility.
[...]
>The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal. With appropriate programming such a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked.
aka electric toothbrush
> wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet
aka a bidet (or a toilet seat with a bidet)
> robot to bathe you
aka a shower
> dishes
aka a dishwasher
> laundry
aka a washer
If you want to do stuff yourself, use a manual toothbrush, learn how to wash your own clothes without a washer (people do this all the time, BTW), wash your own dishes without a dishwasher, don't use dry cleaning services, and use a bucket to take a bath. Also, don't use a vacuum cleaner.
> but I can't shake the feeling that you lose something about being a living, breathing being when you give up these mundane chores.
Say that when you have 3 kids, and cook most of the meals (i.e. no takeouts).
A subject is at the top of a cliff, facing the sea.
"I'd like to see the sea scenery better by approaching the edge".
A step is undertaken. The harpoon enters the mind.
"Oh, so I took this step, I've got to take another one".
N steps are undertaken. The subject is at the very edge right now.
"But hey, one can't stop the progress. Red lines, enough is enough, notions of overdevelopment etc are all excuses for luddites who don't value the merits of automation, easing the humankind's burden and removing all obstacles on the way to the best sea view".
A step more is undertaken.
Thunderous applause, turning into a standing ovation. And... Curtain!
The key is this:
> finances mostly forced
For a while I even hand washed when I did have a dishwasher. Then I realized that was a mistake and I started utilizing it (the dishwasher uses less water, and less energy to heat the water compared to my running the tap on warm).
The point is that after N kids, it stops being therapeutic and merely something you just have to do, and you're happy if you can afford a way not to do it.
One does not simply invest in something new without any effort to make the old look medievally obscurant.
I agree with the rest of your comment but fuck dry cleaning services. Who does dry cleaning regularly?
Things like lining, interfacing and structure are often strong indicators that a garment actually has to be dry-cleaned. I think those are at best only very slightly more common in women's casual clothing.
Thing is, today, as an adult, I'm painfully aware that I'm mortal and life is limited and time is the most precious resource available to me. I'm not religious so I don't believe in after-life reward for being a good boy either. So I'm a little bit more mindful / little less self-flagellating, than I used to be, about these things.
For myself in particular:
* Yes, I shower and wipe my own bottom :)
* I am the dishes and laundry queen in my family, though I definitely use laundry machine (curious where that would fit in your matrix btw? :)
* I don't mind the act of lawn mowing but I absolutely resent the randomness of it - at some point north american society decided that we/they will 1. Adopt a very specific fast growing grass for ALL the lawns and 2. Having it more than ~5cm long is an affront to man and god and neighbourhood alike. Why they haven't just culturally picked cloverleaf or something is beyond me
* I like organizing my living space but I get zero sense of satisfaction out of vacuuming, dusting, and general maintenance. Many other people love it! In turn though, they probably get zero need to constantly rearchitect their home network like I do :->
In sum - I personally put laundry machine and auto-vacuum in very different category than showers and wiping bottoms, but if you lump them together, much power to you, though I don't think it's a tax bracket thing necessarily :)
So if you're an hourly contract worker, and you would otherwise be billing $100/hr to write code or something, then it makes sense to pay a gardener to mow your lawn and a plumber to fix your toilet, as long as it's less than you're making.
But instead, if you'd otherwise just be doom scrolling on your phone or jerking off, you might as well mow that lawn yourself. Paying someone any amount of money is a waste.
I pretty much DIY everything around the house. I work hard for my money, and it feels lazy and wasteful to just ship it off to someone else to do what I am fully capable of doing myself. Maybe when I'm 80 and have trouble walking, I'll pay someone to move furniture around or wash my roof. But not while I'm able bodied.
It sounds like you're saying "pay someone to save you time if you use the time to work, but not if you use the time to relax". One of the best possible uses of money is to save you time, no matter what you use the time for.
Let us understand each other that mowing the lawn relaxes some people, and to others it elevates anxiety and brings the sense of existential dread and time rapidly slipping through our fingers in meaningless repetitive kafkian never-ending tasks required by society for arbitrary unjustified reasons instead :-).
That's the key insight and difference, and not one we can necessarily persuade each other :). My time is worth a LOT to me. I can use the time to play with my kids, be with my wife, play a video game or a musical instrument, read a book, or even doomscroll, if that's what my brain needs at the time. These are things that bring me joy, and mowing the lawn doesn't. I spend a lot of my time doing things out of necessity that don't bring me joy. I have precious little time for things that do bring me joy. I'm not looking to optimize for things I hate.
Don't get me wrong, as I said, I DO laundry and dishes and cleaning and stupid lawn mowing (grr!) and some repairs etc (I don't even have a rumba :). I used to do more car maintenance myself. But when I do bring somebody in to do the work, I do not feel guilty about it - I work my ass off doing things I'm good at and being paid for it, and in turn I sometimes pay others who are way better and more efficient at something than I am :).
Milleage may vary :).
So let's say you're playing a video game, and someone asks you to mow their lawn. How much money would they have to offer you to induce you to do so? That's the marginal dollar value of that video game over mowing their lawn.
Or let's say you're playing a video game, and you need to mow your own lawn, but you don't want to. How much would you pay someone else to mow it so that you can keep playing your game?
Of course, those two amounts would be different because you probably feel differently about mowing your own lawn than about mowing someone else's. The difference between the two should (if you're being consistent, which humans seldom are) be how much would someone have to pay you to mow their lawn instead of your own.
No, of course not. It would be really bizarre to attach a dollar value to something that will not make or cost me money. I value my free time, but I'm not going to pretend there is some concrete dollar value when there is none.
Trying to fix it now. But the time I've lost already, this time is gone.
That’s not middle class. You were poor. I know that, because I was there.
I sometimes dream of being rich enough to afford a servant to do this for me. But realistically even if I was that rich I wouldn't subject someone to that indignity.
It’s so freeing.
It feels well worth even a few hours of my work to pay for the time of the (so efficient) cleaners. So much better value than things most people don’t think twice about paying for (streaming services, faster Internet, a nice car, etc…)
I hired a lovely person recently who comes to the house for exactly that hour a day every day and now does this task for us. It's the most "luxury" labor service I've ever hired, and it, easily and without question, the best use of $$ I have ever spent on a service. I have an extra hour to hang with the family now and our kitchen & play area are now fully reset and spotless every night when we go to bed and every morning when we wake up.
It's not streaming service cheap, and I'm thankful that my business can generate enough $ to allow me to pay for this service, but man is it freeing and wonderful.
I'd much rather pay a nice human significantly more money than have it done by a stinking robot.
From late 19th to early 20th centuries, it was common for British workers to hire charwomen to clean their places. Domestic service was the most typical job for women by the time. Historically it wasn't really something exclusive for the rich.
you mean like a dishwasher or a washing machine?
A different question is. Imagine that you are living with a partner and you agree on a distribution of labour. Let’s say you do the hunting and your partner cleans the house. They are happy with the agreement and fully consent to it. Do you feel it takes away from you being a living, breathing being?
It’s not about tax bracket. You can still pay your cleaning folks a reasonable wage and be kind to them. You can still treat them like human beings. It’s vulnerable to have another person tidy up after you, but fine in the end. Turns out vacuuming isn’t really that personal.
It’s one thing to have NEVER done the mundane chores and entirely another to save some time in your day while you’re at work to have someone help with it.
"Dad we're putting you in a nursing home"
"I don't wanna"
"Dad, there's people where who'll wipe your ass for you"
"Louis pack your things"
a bit like the difference of brushing your teeth and going to a hygienist.
The first organizes things and may do the laundry or put away groceries or something. I wouldn't know for certain, as my income doesn't yet reach to those heady heights.
The second vacuums, mops, cleans bathrooms, etc.
House Cleaner is not going to vacuum around your piles of dirty laundry.
Deep cleaning isn't that hard and, for now, it's relatively inexpensive. There are still only a handful of products where price gouging has occurred due to influencer marketing.
All that needs to happen is another "Tide Pods" type of incident for Amazon to ban commercial cleaning supplies or anything with an SDS. Of course we make the robots do dirty work in this future, and boom you've got another form of surveillance threatening the 4th amendment.
"What's the matter bro? Tryin' to clean up a murder scene or what? huh huh huh"
> desiring a robot to bathe you, wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet, brush your teeth for you
My (EU) country is heading demographic catastrophe, so either I die in my feces or robots help me with hygiene.
Meanwhile I plan to downsize my home to reduce todays chores.
According to that article:
- The global cleaning services market is predicted to grow to roughly $482 billion in 2026 and $859 billion by 2030 with a 7.5% annual growth rate.
- There are over 1.4+ million cleaners currently employed in the U.S.
- The U.S. janitorial services market is worth $112 billion, with 1+ million cleaning businesses as of 2026.
- The average annual pay for a cleaning business owner in the U.S. is $127,973 a year.
- The average annual salary for a house cleaner in the U.S is $35,034.
- 73% of cleaning business owners expect revenue growth in 2026.
- 55% of cleaning businesses raised prices in the last 12 months.
- 41% of households use recurring cleaning services, as customers shift from one-time bookings to weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly plans.
[0] - https://www.getjobber.com/academy/cleaning/cleaning-industry...
Wouldn't that put OP in the majority?
or “I benefit from knowing some moron didn’t come flood the cracks of my floors and wood cabinetry, creating mold”?
Yet to come across pros doing it better than me, means I don’t hire pros yet.
aka electric toothbrush
> wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet
aka a bidet (or a toilet seat with a bidet)
> robot to bathe you
aka a shower
> dishes
aka a dishwasher
> laundry
aka a washer
If you want to do stuff yourself, use a manual toothbrush, learn how to wash your own clothes without a washer (people do this all the time, BTW), wash your own dishes without a dishwasher, don't use dry cleaning services, and use a bucket to take a bath. Also, don't use a vacuum cleaner.
I knew a middle-aged waitress who had a cleaning woman come in every week or two.
After being on her feet for 10 hours dealing with jerks in a diner six days a week, she was too tired to do more than basic cleaning. The price was well worth it to her.