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jawns 22 hours ago [-]
There's obviously a strong incentive for homeowners to participate: they don't have to pay for a service that is often valued at hundreds of dollars.
But what is the incentive for contractors to participate, and how does it overcome the enormous disincentive of "You are training your replacement"?
My guess is that truly skilled contractors in these trades are not hurting for work. So I doubt they're going to be swayed by just a few more extra jobs added to their docket.
Less skilled contractors who are desperate for work might be taken in, but then the quality of their output is likely to be worse, and the value of that training data is likely to be low.
My guess is that people in skilled trades who are used to working with their hands are going to be even more skeptical than white-collar folks about an AI revolution, and more guarded against change in that direction.
gruez 21 hours ago [-]
>But what is the incentive for contractors to participate, and how does it overcome the enormous disincentive of "You are training your replacement"?
Seems to be working fine for AI labs and their army of data annotators (for generating training data and RLHF). Is there any reason to robotics is extra tricky?
raincom 13 hours ago [-]
>But what is the incentive for contractors to participate, and how does it overcome the enormous disincentive of "You are training your replacement"?
They don't need any local companies to participate in this program. This company can hire engineers with an understanding of code (even better, engineering/safety principles behind the code) from the industry. Further, they can go and recruit intelligent people who graduated from trade schools but couldn't get that apprenticeship from local unions. That's all they need, as long as home owners are compensated for any screw ups.
The first line 'Partnerships with home-service companies ...' tells the whole story. No local company with decent trades people on their payroll wants to work with home-service companies, it's always the lowest bidder who wants to get that job from home-service companies. Who are these lowest bidders? Someone brand new, who couldn't get enough clients.
If residential HVAC has more monitoring controls, it is easy to diagnose 99% of the time. What needs to be monitored: supply air temp, return air temp, suction pressure, suction temp, liquid pressure, liquid temp, compressor inrush amps, compressor amp draw, blower motor cfm, blower motor amp draw, further info from ECM and VFD modules if ECM blower motor and VFD compressor are used, etc. Many modern HVACs have some kind of error codes to show what is going on; however, every manufacturer wants his own set of codes, and their special communication prototol, their special thermostat, ...
One can extend similar controls to plumbing and electrical too. That requires a total revamp of how residential electrical/plumbing/hvac is done. This is similar to any field where robots have taken over: the field itself changes in order to accommodate robots.
sublinear 8 hours ago [-]
> This company can hire engineers with an understanding of code (even better, engineering/safety principles behind the code) from the industry
I hate to break it to you, but previous waves of AI did exactly the same thing (e.g. expert systems). Every wave of AI insists that the problem is on the algorithmic side and that they've figured it out this time.
I agree that we should see how this plays out, but don't be surprised if it doesn't work. Much like software development, I suspect there are many strong practical reasons why the real world has a tendency to not align with the specified standards. You can't keep insisting it's mere human incompetence without this whole thing sounding like a grift.
> easy to diagnose 99% of the time
Specifications always have edge cases. Abstractions always leak. That's why everyone is still employed despite all the AI hype. It's wise to expect that 1% is a giant cliff that can totally ruin the success of any project.
raincom 6 hours ago [-]
The issue is not about 1%, but one of the cost of hiring trades people. HVAC companies are charging $25k for a three-ton HVAC unit+furnace in California, when the cost of the the unit is 5k. And these trades people don't want to fix any problem instead they want to sell a full replacement. Same with electrical. You call for some issue. a banktrician (PE owned company with 60 month financial plan) comes and sells a full panel upgrade, full rewiring? What is going to happen then?
Any person with a decent STEM education can learn these trades for DIY'ing. They can learn safety protocols too. When HVAC/plumbing/electricals are installed in a way conducive to robots, it is easier for those who can't afford a lot of money, to work and fix these issues.
The world (esp in residential) is not a union of two disjoint sets: (a) robots/AI (b) trades people. In fact, the third world is huge: an average tinkerer without being burdened by gatekeepers of the trade can fix many issues when these installs happen. At least it becomes easy to replace parts by oneself, instead of hiring a technician.
Your average technician is no better than a tinkerer. For instance, look at HVAC symptoms: https://imgur.com/a/FXf3iXf That's what many HVAC techs carry, they even carry apps that just takes the inputs (pressures, temperatures, etc) and spew out what could be the cause. What if a HVAC system is built in such a way that it is easy to replace parts? Right now, to replace compressor, one has to discharge the refrigerant, unbraze suction and liquid lines, vaccum out, then use nitrogen, braze both lines, then charge it back. Can we have a world where it is easy to reduce these steps so that it becomes easier for robots (as well as for humans)
How about having universal VFD boards the way ABB sells VFDs for water pumps and other motors, instead of getting tied with a particular brand?
The real problem is whether average home owner can bear the cost of trades people? Sure, trades is just like Accenture IT consulting: one rock star software engineer with 30 dummies who can jack up the billable hours; same goes for law firms too.
jerlam 20 hours ago [-]
> My guess is that people in skilled trades who are used to working with their hands are going to be even more skeptical than white-collar folks about an AI revolution
If I was confident that an AI couldn't do my job, I would happily sign up to do this "training" because it's free money and my job is at zero risk.
clintonb 21 hours ago [-]
> My guess is that truly skilled contractors in these trades are not hurting for work.
Why? Are you assuming these folks are also good at marketing, or customers are sharing via word of mouth?
I rent. I assume homeowners use AngiesList or Yelp, but those reviews don’t guarantee skill or that someone will be in high demand.
bravetraveler 20 hours ago [-]
> Are you assuming these folks are ... or customers are sharing via word of mouth?
Seems fair to me (interjecting: not the parent poster). I rent, too, but have heard countless conversations along these lines among Proper Adults.
Often grown-up #1 complaining about their latest project and grown-up #2 offering someone that served them well in the past. Point being, bad experiences are both so common and costly... that those who are good tend to stand out and stay busy. IME, those listings or the phone book are most suitable when you don't have a relationship to leverage (effectively rolling the dice).
happytoexplain 20 hours ago [-]
Yes, "truly skilled" contractors get work entirely through word of mouth. All the best contractors I have discovered were through a relationship, and are always fully booked, frequently doing work on my home due to our relationship, and not due to natural availability.
FLeXMurphy 21 hours ago [-]
> But what is the incentive for contractors to participate, and how does it overcome the enormous disincentive of "You are training your replacement"?
They don't need an army of contractors to do this. They just need a few, much like the AI labs that have a handful of SME staff for each particular subject to guide the corpus of data. See mathematics example.
It is not about knowing if someone can be bought. It's knowing just how much is just enough to buy them.
And then you have individuals whose pride is more than enough. See Terence Tao for a great example of a Useful Idiot.
FLeXMurphy 22 hours ago [-]
I'm seeing a lot of surprised people on this thread. Have a look at the more recent YC batches of startups. Count all the non-AI ones, and subtract from total. And don't pretend to not know what the end game of something like YC is here. And YC is not the only one.
One company doesn't need to do everything. But 100-1000 smaller companies, each taking on a piece of every-day work that people are paid to do and replacing it with AI, is definitely doable and can pay very well if deployed at scale. It doesn't have to be perfect all the time either - just cheap, fast, and good enough. As it always has been.
You didn't really think they are training vision models so they can just drive your car around, or that they are training robots to perform physical tasks so they can just use them in factories, did you?
reticulates 21 hours ago [-]
You’re almost right but missing an entire category of startup: “egocentric” data. A lot of the most high revenue startups right now are, essentially, recruitment agencies for frontier labs to get video of skilled workers. OpenAI and others are spending billions per year with the various startups. We aren’t witnessing specialized startups training for specific sectors, we are witnessing training startups trying to hoover as much video as possible.
Personally, I’m not convinced these startups have much life in them. They’re popular right now because they are low effort as there is a huge demand from the frontier labs, but a year from now, there’ll be more than enough data.
There are at least a dozen in YC and probably hundreds in total.
Aperocky 21 hours ago [-]
There will not be, they will find that the videos submitted are all of noise quality after the training starts, and then they would need videos of certain, specific actions that were basically not recorded. and it will go on and on for quite a long time.
elzbardico 21 hours ago [-]
I think a lot of the founders of such companies know that their companies have an expiry date and no viable exit strategy.
Probably the strategy is making as much money as possible while there's demand from the AI labs and then the founder will figure out their next steps with a bit more money in their accounts.
happytoexplain 21 hours ago [-]
As always: Outrage != surprise.
maitland 22 hours ago [-]
the gen ai image on this page has a "shut off" label for the base of the human plumber's neck. To say nothing of the amusing drainage schematics (water flows up?)...
22 hours ago [-]
psychoslave 22 hours ago [-]
That’s hilarious really, genAI at it’s finest neglecting use case!
momojo 22 hours ago [-]
How is this on the front page? Its not a YC company. They have no internet presence besides a Claude website. 0 followers on X/twitter. No public mentions of funding or votes-of-trust. No names to vouch for them.
Can OP or founders comment?
thomas_unise 21 hours ago [-]
Hi
I’m the owner of this company
What would you like to know?
Just because I’m not in YC does mean anything
I have deep home service connections and have been doing internal ai app development for the past couple years
I think it’s lame people try and downplay a company because they aren’t SF based or in a YC cohort
I made the calls and got the contracts with these home service company who will document all their jobs for me and my team
fxtentacle 17 hours ago [-]
Hi there, I have some experience with reinforcement learning, PPO, RLVR, and I trained both video game AIs and sim2real robot policies.
In my experience, videos from professionals are not enough to train a robot, because you lack all/most of the edge and failure cases. Let me illustrate with pilots: The average Airbus can land itself via autopilot. Autopilot will fly it to the correct location. You confirm the frequencies, it connects to the airport's guidance system and lands itself. Super boring. Videos of that won't help anyone become a proper pilot. The reason pilots train for years is to handle the 1 in a 1000 case where the autopilot doesn't work. And you suddenly have to take over in the middle of a messy approach.
Translated back to your plumbers, the real training is when the robot is carrying a 100kg metal pipe and then the owner's kids come running and pass through under it. Every professional will give their best to immediately reduce efficiency by making things stationary and SAFE. That's the training data that is truly valuable.
BTW, I am considering bootstrapping a startup that uses video game engines to generate training data to make robot policies anticipate physical effects and counter-steer before they happen. Like putting down a heavy steel pipe before it drops due to gravity. With 2 bugfixes merged into the Unreal Engine, I have some experience there ;) So I might soon be in the business of selling custom training data.
Feel free to email me at hn at hajo me
nemomarx 21 hours ago [-]
How is your process for selling the results? do you have a buyer lined up who is loaning the robots for this in some kinda sponsorship deal, do you intend to sell it as a service later on?
thomas_unise 21 hours ago [-]
I have home service techs wearing meta glasses while they do their job.
We are data only. So we have no robots. We capture the entire job and structure the data for training
Our model is to capture hard to get training data for robotics
emdash 21 hours ago [-]
That seems sensible enough to me. I'm not sure why people are acting like it's impossible to succeed if you're not a YC company. I'm pretty sure plenty of non YC companies have done just fine
short_sells_poo 21 hours ago [-]
Well, the parent poster has a point. They are asking: why are you notable? Neither your company, nor you seem to have any track record, references, an indication that you know what you are doing or some prior art that'd be indicative of future performance.
That is not to say that your idea or company are bad, but there's very little substance that would indicate that I should care.
I don't care that you trained your own deepseek derivative or that you got contracts. What you are proposing to do is interesting, but a mission to Mars is also interesting. If it's some random person proposing a mission to Mars, I don't care because they have no chance to actually achieve anything meaningful. If it's a person who has credible support and a plan, sure, now I'm listening.
Why should I care about you doing it? How are you proposing to solve the hard problems, which are in the robotics space?
thomas_unise 21 hours ago [-]
Fair critique
But I am doing what everyone does on here and sharing what I’m up to.
I’m not trying to say I’m special or anything like that.
This just happen to resonate
And I just got this new brand rolling out which is why I have no presence
short_sells_poo 21 hours ago [-]
All good, I was just trying to point out what parent was trying to get at, perhaps too bluntly.
I'm not trying to diss anything you do, kudos for trying!
I generally found that the HN crowd is difficult to please and perhaps a better avenue of getting feedback (and support) is to tailor material specifically for HN.
E.g. if you had a blog post talking about what you are trying to do, the problems you encountered and interesting solutions you are looking at, you'd get a much more interesting response? We get continuously assaulted by "the next big business idea" all the time, both here and in our professional lives. It's difficult to stand out in that deluge. Talking about the technical side can be an easier way to engage people in constructive discussions.
thomas_unise 21 hours ago [-]
Lesson learned, lol
I didn’t expect this kind of response
Will get more on the blog and pushed to socials
happytoexplain 20 hours ago [-]
>I didn’t expect this kind of response
Sorry, but how?
ranger_danger 21 hours ago [-]
I certainly don't like what the parent commenter said, but I find your response to be even more unprofessional and disrespectful, especially coming from the owner of the company.
thomas_unise 21 hours ago [-]
Sorry
I think you might have misread my tone?
I was just trying to clear up anything the OP was curious about
Nothing was intended to come off as harsh
pizza234 22 hours ago [-]
I personally find it very interesting as example of AI moving into the physical world.
momojo 22 hours ago [-]
They don't even do the robotics, they just do the data gathering.
rickydroll 18 hours ago [-]
I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned the Isaac Asimov's story "Profession."
HVAC tech here. Good luck. There are so many times where I have to reach somewhere and can't actually see what I'm looking for and have to go off feel alone. And I only know what it feels like because I've felt that particular part hundreds of times before. I think there are some things that could maybe work, but they would be incredibly basic tasks that are probably just cheaper to have a human do. In any case good luck.
happytoexplain 21 hours ago [-]
Hideous.
colesantiago 22 hours ago [-]
It is known that the AI labs are going for all economically useful work.
Creatives and all white collar jobs are the easiest to target first, with AI labs basically pitching individuals and businesses:
"AI will free you up with more time to do 'other meaningful things'"
If you find yourself laid off or work has run dry from a previous gig because AI can do it better than you, you'll naturally consider a role which AI hasn't touched...yet
Then you see AI and robotics labs going after the margins of blue collar jobs, which then they will also say again to the blue collar workers:
"AI will free you up with more time to do 'other meaningful things'"
I can't imagine what the world will look like if you repeat this N times, or even in 10 years.
Because you need to pay your rent, and bills right?
Unless rent, bills and all the rest of it doesn't mean anything anymore in this 'AI abundance' age.
Noaidi 22 hours ago [-]
Anyone who participates in this is a traitor to humanity.
theoreticalmal 22 hours ago [-]
An HVAC tech charged me $750 to perform one swage connection on a mini-split install I was working on. $750 for $0.10 of combustibles and 45 minutes of time. Service workers are willingly pushing their customer base into these robotic solutions and I am thrilled at the idea of a robot coming out to do some work for 1/3 of the cost
SuperSixFour 20 hours ago [-]
Your comment doesn't really make sense. A swage connection is done by a tool and requires no combustibles. If you needed combustibles then you need a license to handle those combustibles. And you need special tools to decide how much of those combustibles to add. You also need special tools to actually add the combustibles to the system. And before that, you need special tools to prep the system for those combustibles. And before you can do that, you need special tools to make sure your system is adequately sealed before even attempting to get the system ready to add the combustibles.
Maybe next time you should spend the few grand on all those tools, the hours it takes to learn how to use them, and can do it yourself!
rickydroll 18 hours ago [-]
Looks like a speech recognition error for consumables. That said, many refrigerants today are quite combustible.
npongratz 21 hours ago [-]
As much as I am a skeptic of household maintenance robots, I'll admit that the robots will probably 1) actually show up, 2) show up around the time they say they would, 3) won't be drunk, 4) won't ask me to join their MLM.
Though I'm less sure about (4), considering the Worldcoin eyeball-harvesting scammers and the AI-bailout scammers are one and the same.
happytoexplain 20 hours ago [-]
I can't believe I'm seeing this common low-quality "what do tradeys even do" fallacy as the top comment on an HN submission. It makes me want to cry that we are so fucked as a culture that we are scoffing at how much tradesmen charge (not that there aren't conmen in every single sector).
praxulus 22 hours ago [-]
I do not believe that our purpose in life is to work as plumbers.
happytoexplain 21 hours ago [-]
You're putting the cart roughly one lightyear before the horse.
vkou 22 hours ago [-]
Indeed, our purpose is to pay rent to our betters.
whartung 22 hours ago [-]
It just reminds me of a cartoon in my head.
First pane has a supervisor, a plumber, and a robot, with the supervisor pointing to the robot.
Next pane is the robot watching the plumber work.
Next pane is the plumber watching the robot work.
Final pane is the robot with a bloody wrench standing over the dead plumber.
Yes, it's a similar situation (though with software, replacement of existing workers and augmentation of existing workers are both possible, while in the physical world, replacement is more natural, assuming robotics gets to that point). What are you implying?
FLeXMurphy 22 hours ago [-]
Meh. Take a look at the latest few YC batches of companies. This is nothing.
vkou 22 hours ago [-]
The rich paying a quarter of the population to help them fuck over the other three quarters is a tale as old as time.
dyauspitr 22 hours ago [-]
I want to see the robots do everything humans can do in my lifetime. This is good for everyone. When no one has a job we will figure out a way to make it work.
happytoexplain 21 hours ago [-]
>When no one has a job we will figure out a way to make it work.
Mind-bogglingly casual acceptance of civil war when all you had to do was change the order to put "We will figure out a way to make it work" before "No one has a job".
dyauspitr 20 hours ago [-]
That’s not mind-boggling. If you start putting out restrictions and regulations everything is going to fizzle out like 100s of other fields have done in the past. There hasn’t been any significant paradigm shifting progress in genetic engineering because everyone’s hands are tied when we could probably accomplish so much that would benefit hundreds of millions of people.
vkou 3 hours ago [-]
> like 100s of other fields have done in the past
Could you list, say, a dozen such fields? It should be very easy if there are, uh, hundreds of them.
> There hasn’t been any significant paradigm shifting progress in genetic engineering because everyone’s hands are tied
Or maybe there hasn't been such progress (across a wide range of polities with a wide range of regulatory environments) because it's incredibly hard?
gusmally 22 hours ago [-]
are devs who use LLMs also traitors, in your view?
happytoexplain 21 hours ago [-]
In all parts of society, there is a subjective spectrum between "making work more efficient" and "directly replacing significant numbers of workers in a period too short to adjust to avoid suffering". The closer you get to the latter, the more you are a "traitor". Use of LLMs for software development falls all over the spectrum, case-by-case.
black6 22 hours ago [-]
At what point do these services become free, in the Star Trek post-scarcity sense? How is the promise that automation will ultimately provides freedom from struggling for survival upheld? The piper has to be paid, unless the owner class all of a sudden does a one-eighty and decides they can stop raking in money.
debo_ 21 hours ago [-]
According to the Star Trek timeline, we first need to experience the Bell Riots, the Eugenics Wars, and World War III before your proposal can be enacted.
nekusar 22 hours ago [-]
The only way that will happen is when we convert from a capitalist to a socialist democratic economic structure. It'll likely need a whole host of bloody wars for that.
Probably should do that before policing/military humanoid robots are cheap enough. If we don't, we're looking at our future as indentured servitude for capitalists for the rest of the lifetime this earth can support life.
FLeXMurphy 22 hours ago [-]
>It'll likely need a whole host of bloody wars for that.
Out of curiosity who are we killing or getting killed by? What amount of brainwashing will it take to get all these rubes to kill eachother to make the 1% richer?
anon7725 21 hours ago [-]
> What amount of brainwashing will it take to get all these rubes to kill eachother to make the 1% richer?
I suppose whatever the amount is we reached it a while ago, given the number of people who have died for oil prices or to distract from this or that domestic political situation.
black6 21 hours ago [-]
"Oh you don't have to fight them, you just have to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks."
nekusar 21 hours ago [-]
For example:
Pro-capitalist governments (cycle of corruption choosing the winners, revolving door between politics and business)
Human and robotic military conscripted to fight
Capitalists
Capitalists' workers paid enough to not be "worker class"
The other side:
Union supporters
Workers rights advocates
Socialists/communists
People who lost jobs/poverty class
Workers abused more than "average"
We have seen these types of wars before, and in the USA. Our own worker rights and union history was horrendously bloody. Even had the US military killing strikers and union folks. It's also where the private military, The Pinkertons, came from.
And prior to 1940s with FDR, there was a strong Socialist and Communist groups pushing for their respective changes. FDR appeased some of the demands with his reforms. And those reforms were credited to the success of the late 50's and 60's.
But what is the incentive for contractors to participate, and how does it overcome the enormous disincentive of "You are training your replacement"?
My guess is that truly skilled contractors in these trades are not hurting for work. So I doubt they're going to be swayed by just a few more extra jobs added to their docket.
Less skilled contractors who are desperate for work might be taken in, but then the quality of their output is likely to be worse, and the value of that training data is likely to be low.
My guess is that people in skilled trades who are used to working with their hands are going to be even more skeptical than white-collar folks about an AI revolution, and more guarded against change in that direction.
Seems to be working fine for AI labs and their army of data annotators (for generating training data and RLHF). Is there any reason to robotics is extra tricky?
They don't need any local companies to participate in this program. This company can hire engineers with an understanding of code (even better, engineering/safety principles behind the code) from the industry. Further, they can go and recruit intelligent people who graduated from trade schools but couldn't get that apprenticeship from local unions. That's all they need, as long as home owners are compensated for any screw ups.
The first line 'Partnerships with home-service companies ...' tells the whole story. No local company with decent trades people on their payroll wants to work with home-service companies, it's always the lowest bidder who wants to get that job from home-service companies. Who are these lowest bidders? Someone brand new, who couldn't get enough clients.
If residential HVAC has more monitoring controls, it is easy to diagnose 99% of the time. What needs to be monitored: supply air temp, return air temp, suction pressure, suction temp, liquid pressure, liquid temp, compressor inrush amps, compressor amp draw, blower motor cfm, blower motor amp draw, further info from ECM and VFD modules if ECM blower motor and VFD compressor are used, etc. Many modern HVACs have some kind of error codes to show what is going on; however, every manufacturer wants his own set of codes, and their special communication prototol, their special thermostat, ...
One can extend similar controls to plumbing and electrical too. That requires a total revamp of how residential electrical/plumbing/hvac is done. This is similar to any field where robots have taken over: the field itself changes in order to accommodate robots.
I hate to break it to you, but previous waves of AI did exactly the same thing (e.g. expert systems). Every wave of AI insists that the problem is on the algorithmic side and that they've figured it out this time.
I agree that we should see how this plays out, but don't be surprised if it doesn't work. Much like software development, I suspect there are many strong practical reasons why the real world has a tendency to not align with the specified standards. You can't keep insisting it's mere human incompetence without this whole thing sounding like a grift.
> easy to diagnose 99% of the time
Specifications always have edge cases. Abstractions always leak. That's why everyone is still employed despite all the AI hype. It's wise to expect that 1% is a giant cliff that can totally ruin the success of any project.
Any person with a decent STEM education can learn these trades for DIY'ing. They can learn safety protocols too. When HVAC/plumbing/electricals are installed in a way conducive to robots, it is easier for those who can't afford a lot of money, to work and fix these issues.
The world (esp in residential) is not a union of two disjoint sets: (a) robots/AI (b) trades people. In fact, the third world is huge: an average tinkerer without being burdened by gatekeepers of the trade can fix many issues when these installs happen. At least it becomes easy to replace parts by oneself, instead of hiring a technician.
Your average technician is no better than a tinkerer. For instance, look at HVAC symptoms: https://imgur.com/a/FXf3iXf That's what many HVAC techs carry, they even carry apps that just takes the inputs (pressures, temperatures, etc) and spew out what could be the cause. What if a HVAC system is built in such a way that it is easy to replace parts? Right now, to replace compressor, one has to discharge the refrigerant, unbraze suction and liquid lines, vaccum out, then use nitrogen, braze both lines, then charge it back. Can we have a world where it is easy to reduce these steps so that it becomes easier for robots (as well as for humans)
How about having universal VFD boards the way ABB sells VFDs for water pumps and other motors, instead of getting tied with a particular brand?
The real problem is whether average home owner can bear the cost of trades people? Sure, trades is just like Accenture IT consulting: one rock star software engineer with 30 dummies who can jack up the billable hours; same goes for law firms too.
If I was confident that an AI couldn't do my job, I would happily sign up to do this "training" because it's free money and my job is at zero risk.
Why? Are you assuming these folks are also good at marketing, or customers are sharing via word of mouth?
I rent. I assume homeowners use AngiesList or Yelp, but those reviews don’t guarantee skill or that someone will be in high demand.
Seems fair to me (interjecting: not the parent poster). I rent, too, but have heard countless conversations along these lines among Proper Adults.
Often grown-up #1 complaining about their latest project and grown-up #2 offering someone that served them well in the past. Point being, bad experiences are both so common and costly... that those who are good tend to stand out and stay busy. IME, those listings or the phone book are most suitable when you don't have a relationship to leverage (effectively rolling the dice).
They don't need an army of contractors to do this. They just need a few, much like the AI labs that have a handful of SME staff for each particular subject to guide the corpus of data. See mathematics example.
It is not about knowing if someone can be bought. It's knowing just how much is just enough to buy them.
And then you have individuals whose pride is more than enough. See Terence Tao for a great example of a Useful Idiot.
One company doesn't need to do everything. But 100-1000 smaller companies, each taking on a piece of every-day work that people are paid to do and replacing it with AI, is definitely doable and can pay very well if deployed at scale. It doesn't have to be perfect all the time either - just cheap, fast, and good enough. As it always has been.
You didn't really think they are training vision models so they can just drive your car around, or that they are training robots to perform physical tasks so they can just use them in factories, did you?
Personally, I’m not convinced these startups have much life in them. They’re popular right now because they are low effort as there is a huge demand from the frontier labs, but a year from now, there’ll be more than enough data.
There are at least a dozen in YC and probably hundreds in total.
Probably the strategy is making as much money as possible while there's demand from the AI labs and then the founder will figure out their next steps with a bit more money in their accounts.
Can OP or founders comment?
I’m the owner of this company
What would you like to know?
Just because I’m not in YC does mean anything
I have deep home service connections and have been doing internal ai app development for the past couple years
I think it’s lame people try and downplay a company because they aren’t SF based or in a YC cohort
I made the calls and got the contracts with these home service company who will document all their jobs for me and my team
In my experience, videos from professionals are not enough to train a robot, because you lack all/most of the edge and failure cases. Let me illustrate with pilots: The average Airbus can land itself via autopilot. Autopilot will fly it to the correct location. You confirm the frequencies, it connects to the airport's guidance system and lands itself. Super boring. Videos of that won't help anyone become a proper pilot. The reason pilots train for years is to handle the 1 in a 1000 case where the autopilot doesn't work. And you suddenly have to take over in the middle of a messy approach.
Translated back to your plumbers, the real training is when the robot is carrying a 100kg metal pipe and then the owner's kids come running and pass through under it. Every professional will give their best to immediately reduce efficiency by making things stationary and SAFE. That's the training data that is truly valuable.
BTW, I am considering bootstrapping a startup that uses video game engines to generate training data to make robot policies anticipate physical effects and counter-steer before they happen. Like putting down a heavy steel pipe before it drops due to gravity. With 2 bugfixes merged into the Unreal Engine, I have some experience there ;) So I might soon be in the business of selling custom training data.
Feel free to email me at hn at hajo me
We are data only. So we have no robots. We capture the entire job and structure the data for training
Our model is to capture hard to get training data for robotics
That is not to say that your idea or company are bad, but there's very little substance that would indicate that I should care.
I don't care that you trained your own deepseek derivative or that you got contracts. What you are proposing to do is interesting, but a mission to Mars is also interesting. If it's some random person proposing a mission to Mars, I don't care because they have no chance to actually achieve anything meaningful. If it's a person who has credible support and a plan, sure, now I'm listening.
Why should I care about you doing it? How are you proposing to solve the hard problems, which are in the robotics space?
But I am doing what everyone does on here and sharing what I’m up to.
I’m not trying to say I’m special or anything like that.
This just happen to resonate
And I just got this new brand rolling out which is why I have no presence
I'm not trying to diss anything you do, kudos for trying!
I generally found that the HN crowd is difficult to please and perhaps a better avenue of getting feedback (and support) is to tailor material specifically for HN.
E.g. if you had a blog post talking about what you are trying to do, the problems you encountered and interesting solutions you are looking at, you'd get a much more interesting response? We get continuously assaulted by "the next big business idea" all the time, both here and in our professional lives. It's difficult to stand out in that deluge. Talking about the technical side can be an easier way to engage people in constructive discussions.
I didn’t expect this kind of response
Will get more on the blog and pushed to socials
Sorry, but how?
I think you might have misread my tone?
I was just trying to clear up anything the OP was curious about
Nothing was intended to come off as harsh
https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/SF/AST/AST_1957_...
Creatives and all white collar jobs are the easiest to target first, with AI labs basically pitching individuals and businesses:
"AI will free you up with more time to do 'other meaningful things'"
If you find yourself laid off or work has run dry from a previous gig because AI can do it better than you, you'll naturally consider a role which AI hasn't touched...yet
Then you see AI and robotics labs going after the margins of blue collar jobs, which then they will also say again to the blue collar workers:
"AI will free you up with more time to do 'other meaningful things'"
I can't imagine what the world will look like if you repeat this N times, or even in 10 years.
Because you need to pay your rent, and bills right?
Unless rent, bills and all the rest of it doesn't mean anything anymore in this 'AI abundance' age.
Maybe next time you should spend the few grand on all those tools, the hours it takes to learn how to use them, and can do it yourself!
Though I'm less sure about (4), considering the Worldcoin eyeball-harvesting scammers and the AI-bailout scammers are one and the same.
First pane has a supervisor, a plumber, and a robot, with the supervisor pointing to the robot.
Next pane is the robot watching the plumber work.
Next pane is the plumber watching the robot work.
Final pane is the robot with a bloody wrench standing over the dead plumber.
Mind-bogglingly casual acceptance of civil war when all you had to do was change the order to put "We will figure out a way to make it work" before "No one has a job".
Could you list, say, a dozen such fields? It should be very easy if there are, uh, hundreds of them.
> There hasn’t been any significant paradigm shifting progress in genetic engineering because everyone’s hands are tied
Or maybe there hasn't been such progress (across a wide range of polities with a wide range of regulatory environments) because it's incredibly hard?
Probably should do that before policing/military humanoid robots are cheap enough. If we don't, we're looking at our future as indentured servitude for capitalists for the rest of the lifetime this earth can support life.
Out of curiosity who are we killing or getting killed by? What amount of brainwashing will it take to get all these rubes to kill eachother to make the 1% richer?
I suppose whatever the amount is we reached it a while ago, given the number of people who have died for oil prices or to distract from this or that domestic political situation.
Pro-capitalist governments (cycle of corruption choosing the winners, revolving door between politics and business)
Human and robotic military conscripted to fight
Capitalists
Capitalists' workers paid enough to not be "worker class"
The other side:
Union supporters
Workers rights advocates
Socialists/communists
People who lost jobs/poverty class
Workers abused more than "average"
We have seen these types of wars before, and in the USA. Our own worker rights and union history was horrendously bloody. Even had the US military killing strikers and union folks. It's also where the private military, The Pinkertons, came from.
And prior to 1940s with FDR, there was a strong Socialist and Communist groups pushing for their respective changes. FDR appeased some of the demands with his reforms. And those reforms were credited to the success of the late 50's and 60's.