Comment by breadzephyr
12 hours ago
Looks to me like they want to get in on 3D mapping homes that haven't already been mapped by a Roomba or other similar bot. There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police. At the same time the customer's home is being cleaned, all objects can be scanned to data-mine the customer's shopping preferences.
Maybe training AI and bots is part of what they're trying to accomplish, but I just can't help wonder what else they are trying to do. I am extremely suspicious of any tech companies that make it seem like a great idea to let their tech in my house.
I can't imagine what is going to happen when, if this company ever really develops cleaning bots, their bots misidentify something as a weapon or drug stash and automatically dial the police. Or one of their bots gets remotely hacked by a vengeful person who then triggers the bot to call in a SWAT team.
Also, if this kind of labor is the "unskilled" labor that we've all heard of (or have been told is "unskilled"), AI systems shouldn't need any training for it ;)
Yeah, definitely. On one hand it's obvious such companies will want this data precisely to make their systems work. On the other hand... once they have the data, we all know it also ends up wherever someone is willing to pay for it. Even if they say it's not the goal today... 10 years from now how do you know the owner of the data at that point will feel the same way? Doubly so since they don't seem to be making any privacy guarantees around the pricing, just attempts at anonymizing the high level things.
I find it interesting how many people get worked up about the "skilled/unskilled" terminology though. Just walking to arbitrary waypoints is an extraordinary feet in itself - if you dropped me in the past and told me to build something which walks (or even just traverses) as such I would likely not achieve it in my lifetime, despite having great insight into how we've already accomplished this goal. At the same time, people know listing "mastered the ability to walk as a child, proficient in running" in the skills section of their resume does not make sense. It seems easy enough to understand the difference in meaning between the two contexts (skills an average human is expected to have over, say, a rock vs skills which differentiate one as able to start a job without waiting for several years of additional development) rather than seek to pick the least relevant interpretation.
OTOH, there are definitely jobs which get conflated as having a low barrier to entry (for the average person) but actually take many years of training to be able to get a typical job in (and not just for the "high end" version of the job). That's definitely a misclassification, but not for something like cleaning homes where the average person is expected to be able to do it themselves.
> OTOH, there are definitely jobs which get conflated as having a low barrier to entry (for the average person) but actually take many years of training to be able to get a typical job in
Isn't the barrier to entry due to the jobs not allowing for mistakes? Cleaning has a high tolerance for mistakes (e.g. missing bits, leaving streaks on windows etc) and so it's fine for an inexperienced cleaner to learn from their mistakes whilst doing the job. However, people would not be happy for a lawyer or surgeon to be learning from their mistakes whilst working - they are expected to already be competent and mistakes are generally very damaging.
Yeah, I'd say a job "does not allow for many mistakes" and "requires skill in the labor" are two ways of saying the same thing. If it's alright to do the job completely wrong most of the time and it still make sense to be hired then the base position in that job does not have a skills requirement.
>There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police.
The police basically already have this in the form of building records. Unless you live in a really old building or you've made unapproved modifications, they've got an accurate layout if they care to look.
There's nuance, though. You're right in that they can get a general layout of the rooms in the home, but a mapped layout from a device like this gives them a lot more detailed information - where large objects are that potential targets could hide behind, or stash things.
One data point offers a drawing of where the walls are, another paints a picture of where everything the occupant owns is sitting.
> There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police.
Perhaps more to thieves who can make sure they break into a place worth raiding.
There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police
Is there?
I can totally imagine the sales pitch to police departments: before you bust down the door of the local journalist who criticized you, look up their home floor plan and review 360 camera footage of each room, so you can get to their laptop before it locks when your surveillance team detects they’ve stepped away to use the bathroom.
Ignoring the OTT scenario premise; if the surveillance team is able to detect movement like that then the surveillance team already knows where the laptop is. Why would you need a floor plan?
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Came here to post exactly this. Is there, really?
I would guess so, they seem interested in the ring cameras https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/09/30/ring-police-partn...
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yeah the parent was a rather dumb comment. police don't buy intelligence on the population en mass. how could they afford it snd how could they use it without probable cause? if you are already a target of an investigation they can get a warrant for free with due process.
rofl
I assume you are being tongue-in-cheek, but too subtle
one paragraph in the three mile long TOS the homeowner clicks OK on and problem solved ?
They'd save money if they knew exactly which spot of the wall to shoot through to kill the innocent sleeping person next door, that's at least a few dollars a week in bullets alone.
The Stasi would blush
Insurance companies too. They were one of the first ones to map out in detail building plans for entire cities.
If the service is free, the product is you.
This sounds like a decent deal for the segment of customers who are happy to have their shopping preferences mapped (which seems to be almost all) and don’t care if a 3rd party has their home layout.
My home layout was approved by the local council, and is freely available for anyone to see. I get personal belongings, but who cares about home layout?
You are conflicting room layout to home layout. In genreal, blueprints or something similar are available. Where your bed, sofa, and tables are located isn't.
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