>A refrigerator shelf was cracked, and a broken glass or dish had been left in the garbage disposal. A wooden nightstand drawer was chipped. Cups and plates were in the wrong places. It looked like the furniture had been moved around.
Not sure which one is worse, the fact that the bot can't actually do household chore or the fact that the humans can't clean it up.
Well, no wonder people don't have faith in the people selling AI.
Also, if this is the best they can do and left such a mess, don’t let them operate robots or any machines! Teach them to use a mop and then maybe upgrade them to a vacuum, and if they pass, let them use a sink garbage disposal under adult supervision.
It reaches for people without morals, and instructs them to pursue profit without regard for morality.
I'm very, very, very glad to hear that these people are getting sued.
They should expect to feel a hostile world if they put their every effort into creating a hostile world
So the host wasn't able to add the additional risk and hassle to the price, which in this instance would have been a quite legitimate ask as the robot damaged their revenue generating property.
It's very ironic that Airbnb itself has done similar practices in the past where it ignored hospitality regulations to establish their business model, i.e. not asking for permission but for forgiveness.
The Airbnb style response would be to gig-ify this model where you ask an independent contractor to buy the test robot, rent the Airbnb, and test it out instead of you doing it yourself. Then the contractor bears the risk of damages to the property.
I am someone who came of age during an incredibly hopeful time about how technology could be a force for good. The silicon valley ethos at present is totally morally bankrupt and rotten to the core.
And the more "software eats the world", the less this paradigm is gonna be a feasible market strategy. I've harbored these thoughts from way back and hence I was (and continue to be) skeptical of unregulated start-ups/new tech ideas who interface with the real world: Hyperloop, Tesla self-driving, and Theranos come to mind. An interesting case study in my view is _Github_ who in theory, having software engineers for customers, should be pretty well-insulated from the expensive repair costs of the real world. And yet we'd all agree they need a GINORMOUS dose of that sweet sweet "stable infra".
Now I’m getting even angrier imagining the email that went around internally on how to spin this and why it was a short term loss but will be for the long term good. Of trying to kill off the idea of cleaning people and then jacking up rates.
If you break a production server you don't just leave it broken...
I'm assuming these companies have VC cash, so not just paying for repairs and risking negative publicity seems extremely foolish.
I wonder why that was on the same level of complaints about broken things.
Stop outsourcing the cost of your vision to the rest of society. Especially when it’s peanuts to you and meaningful to, in this case, the host of what they call an apartment and you seem to think is a test course.
I've got mine, you can all go f*ck yourselves.
We need to get back to a place where other people matter, where the implicit social contract is honoured by everyone, and there are consequences for breaking it.
They won't because that's a fundamental principle of the model they believe in.
But hundreds of millions sounds like enough money to get some industrial or dead commercial space (even in/around SF) and outfit it to be like an apartment. Or six different ones, and six others two weeks from now, and two weeks after that. The cost of the space and the carpenters/painters/drywallers/handymen/managers/whatevers would seem to be something of such relative insignificance that it doesn't even show up on the budgetary radar.
Scamming homeowners out of relative peanuts is super cringe. Everyone looks bad:
- Employees - Management - Investors - Previous companies listed
& “move fast & be antisocial” Bot Co. too. Photograph/video walkthrough the rental beforehand, safeguard antiques/uniques, professionally restore to 100%, nobody ever has to know. Or call host, drop cash.
Make people whole - this is so much easier than your robots, guys.
Learned from the best of them, I see.
Modern tech culture is a blight on society.
That tracks.
If the company ends up having no commercial success and the lawsuits for damages rack up, can they just close the company file for bankruptcy and face no consequences? Or is there some civil or criminal risk to this behaviour?
But anyone that personally causes damage through negligence or intentional acts can be sued personally as well. If the employer is bankrupt the employees involved would be the only ones pursued. And these damages are relatively small individually, bankruptcy is not an issue.
Also there are some exceptions to the limited liability for company owners or directors like for illegal activity and fraud.
Since the Airbnb bookings were ostensibly made by individuals, most attorneys would also name those individuals (in addition to the company if the company was named).
Having your founders/management/employees rent houses via Airbnb is a really bad strategy for limiting your liability using a company.
If the company's owners had unlimited liability for problems the company caused, that wouldn't be much of an LLC, would it? The primary purpose of an LLC is to make it so that the owners (often the founders) cannot personally be held responsible for debts the company incurs, even debts incurred through their instructions.
This also includes debts caused by punishment for the company breaking civil contracts, but doesn't make individuals who use the company to break the law immune to criminal charges. But the standard of evidence for prosecuting that type of malfeasance is pretty high...
It’s more so investors who aren’t involved in day-to-day decision making can invest without worrying that the founders will create liability for them.
Insufficient capitalization is the #1 reason for piercing the veil (and also works well against corporations). This involves not putting enough investment into a company to pay the foreseeable debts it would incur from its activities. This means: if your LLC incurs debts knowing it lacks the ability to pay them off, the courts can pierce the LLC and go after you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil
If this were happening in the real world, they would have to personally back some of the corporate debts before banks would lend them money. But this is Silicon Valley, where banks and VCs just give away money to their buddies.
It's also not a dichotomy. It can be both criminal and civil. Victims always have the right to seek compensation in parallel with criminal punishment.
If we want to put a stop to this sort of behavior from businesses we can't be punishing employees for this behavior, we have to run it up the chain.
[1] https://aeronauticsmagazine.com/news/no-robots-allowed-south...
Of course, the're will be a few robot dogs patrolling the fences and hidden behind closets on the rare occasions the servants decide to rebel.
This sounds a lot like criminal invasion of privacy.
Edit: What are you downvoting? You can’t secretly watch Airbnb guests through a window you rented to them for the same reason you can’t put spy cameras in their bathroom.
Systematically? No. Casually? Of course you can. Why wouldn’t you be allowed to?
These aren’t corporate landlords, after all.
I'm a little surprised he didn't knock and ask to go in.
How many startups work is they simply break the law. The gamble is that you can get big enough fast enough that you can then lobby for a change in the law before governments catch up. Uber and Airbnb are like the posterchildren for this. Taxi services are regulated. You can't run an illegal hotel in a residential area. Simple.
So what we have here is another company who doesn't want to make a test kitchen or house. No, that's too expensive. So they'll instead use another startup to effectively steal a lab. It's layers upon layers of illegality, basically.
So if this succeeds and this company creates waves of domestic robots, we can then start to imagine what the next layer is. Will somebody rent an Airbnb with domestic robots so it can then sublet those robots to somebody else or use them for tasks they weren't designed for?
Keep it real, Kyle. It doesn't seem like you learned anything from the failure of your last company.
[1] https://weartv.com/news/local/report-pensacola-woman-charged...
Which is below the CA 12,500$ limit for small claims court.
Haven't checked whether the case was brought to small claims, but that'd be my guess.
At some point does morality ever enter the equation, or does YC deliberately go out of its way to select people with utter disregard for the laws or rights of other people?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7sd_yhc8IY
Yeah.
