I think it's important that someone point out this isn't a 'PR problem'. It's a practical resistance to commodified surveillance. All these domestic robotics companies train on video of users homes, many sell such data, each and every one are a vector for state domestic state surveillance. Not to mention criminal hackers, stalkers and others with an interest in who is at home when and what precisely they are doing. Short of having non-internet connected, locally processing domestic robots - something unlikely to exist in the foreseeable future - they are a privacy nightmare. Bad as google home, alexa and such devices are for privacy - a walking, controllable, camera and set of mechanical arms running loose in a home is infinitely worse.
That is pretty far down the list. For the most part, they just want to see what products you have so they can sell you more.
And PR is the problem you have to overcome for people to let smart devices into their homes too. For instance, people started avoiding Ring cameras once it got out that they're a privacy nightmare -- that's PR. Sure, the people that avoid them care about privacy -- that's why they're listening -- but PR is the reason they even had anything to listen to. Likewise, PR is how people get creeped out by robots scanning their homes. They already never wanted that, of course, but they weren't creeped out until they learned about it. That's PR. Now people are wary to let any new devices into their homes, especially robots, because of historical PR like this. And so now it is a PR problem to get people to give you a chance in the first place.
Edit: I want to be explicit here that I'm saying you avoid bad PR by not only being good but having people discover the good. And waiting for people to sufficiently discover it can be a struggle. It doesn't matter how good you are if people don't know. That's what I mean by it being a PR problem -- PR is how people know.
The PR problem is downstream consequence of what can be measured, but the root cause is upstream. Focusing directly on solving the downstream problem is basically Goodharting the metric -- thereby ensuring the upstream problem never really gets solved, and the downstream metric becomes fake and decoupled from the true situation.
Once you "solve the PR problem" what is the incentive to ensure that the root problem is actually solved now that you have successfully blinded yourself (society) from measuring the true problem?
I never said focus directly on downstream. I thought it would be obvious that I'm talking about why you bother with upstream, because the downstream effects are important.
It seems I phrased something very wrong because it looks like everybody is assuming I'm saying that you should do as much bad as you can possibly prevent people from noticing.
Frankly I couldn't give two hoots about the impact on sales of future robotic devices of the 'PR problem' of their perceived privacy intrusions. By contrast the actual danger of their real material privacy intrusions is deeply concerning. Similar to Ring - or more pertinently Flock cameras.
The media discourse is interesting, but only sociologically. The fact that these devices are actually spying is significantly more pertinent.
> PR is the problem you have to overcome for people to let smart devices into their homes too.
Why on earth should real material concerns be 'overcome'? These concerns focus on real and deeply serious issues. They concern child safety, marital privacy and a host of other real issues.
> PR is the reason they even had anything to listen to.
This is factually incorrect. You're confusing the shadows in the cave for reality.
It’s not that the robots are surveilling and that would be morally wrong… it’s that people are upset by it and that impacts the bottom line.
“I’m sorry that you chose to feel that way”
What I'm saying is that PR influences how the masses perceive your product and therefore whether it gets mass adoption or mass avoidance. Yes, the so-called "material effect" (whether privacy is actually undermined by the product) results in PR one way or the other, but most people don't do the digging to figure out exactly what the material is, they rely on what has reached the public eye.
> Why on earth should real material concerns be 'overcome'? These concerns focus on real and deeply serious issues. They concern child safety, marital privacy and a host of other real issues.
You overcome it by being able to prove you don't invade privacy. That's overcoming the preconceived notion that products in your category are not to be trusted in general.
I never, ever said or meant that the goal is to still undermine privacy but just not have people find out or have a problem with it. (Even though most companies in practice have this goal)
Places that will leave alone an unsupervised robot don't have lots of trash around.
Entirely disjoint sets.
The idea sounds good, but I'm curious about the "low cost" part. How do you account for vandalism and theft? A sidewalk robot seems like an easy target for being damaged, stripped for parts, or simply stolen.
Starship alone seems to have running operations also in UK, Sweden, Estonia and Czhecia.
My much less researched understanding of China is that there's much less protections in terms of well-being (no federal minimum wage, absurd work hours as standard, etc), but China also comes down much harder (at least, compared to the US) on companies that violate laws. Actual punishments will depend on loyalty, but companies take care to avoid that situation to begin with.
I can't speak at all for the rest of SEA.
There absolutely is minimal wage but is set by local governments, because different places have different cost of living.
There are better protections for work hours for salaried workers than America. Anything above 40 hours get paid at 1.5X and anything above 60 hours get paid at 2x.
For layoffs in China, you have to pay N+1 of months of salary in terms of severance. N being the number of years an employee has been there.
And talking about absurd work hours, SK and Japan aren't better than China.
So China overall has far better labor rights protection than the U.S.
On paper, no. Japan has overtime bonuses too, but you're culturally discouraged from reporting overtime. So 12 hour days are common with no OT. And thats not including "optional" after work outings.
Yet, it's also not uncommon for Japan to bring about the "appearance" of working more than really working. Whether you judge that appearance of work as more or less stressful than China's work standards is a more personal question.
Either way, my main comparison was Asia to the US rather than countries within Asia. US has higher salaries, better minumum wage (but still nowhere near good), and usually better hours. But stability without unions is non-existent as we've seen the past decades.
I suppose it shall be the case for the short term at least that we must admit that “humans” really cause harm. Though perhaps that’s over specific and I should recognize that most crime is committed by eukaryotes.
Alternatively they could add a chain gun to the robot to deal with the vandals
Asimov reeling in his grave.
You don't consider the problems. That's how you can pretend it'll be low cost.
And I disagree with you. I'm pretty sure parents worldwide would love a clean-up robot. You can avoid a lot of the risks by making it work only for empty rooms, which is OK because you need to clean up and let the vacuum robot run anyway (when the kids are away sleeping in their bedroom). There's been multiple attempts at building DYI robots to vacuum LEGO bricks off the floor. (Because stepping on them at night is such an immediate pain point.) Unless your product is soaked in hostile behavior and surveillance tech, parents will probably be happy to buy an in-home cleaning robot, no PR needed.
I think the main issue here is that parents are typically busy, which makes them bad startup founders, which is why they cannot "scratch their itch" and turn it into a business.
=> home cleaning robots do not exist because western VCs don't like it and parents aren't usually startup founders.
Btw, Singapore shows that we already have proven, low cost techniques for keeping cities clean without robots.
There is no reason to ever have a humanoid, except to make humans feel warm and fuzzy.
Only once you build greenfield, e.g. new factories, making specially shaped and sized robots for automation jobs becomes worth considering, IMO.
You could just buy cartons of cigarettes and chop off the butts, at that rate.
I joke, but this is surely what would eventuate.
That is maybe based on Hanoi rat massacre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanoi_Rat_Massacre
I doubt wealthy HOA communities have much random trash to pick up in the first place
But yes, it does also help that a richer community correlates with more care about littering to begin with.