'Hire a human': San Francisco woman pays $30 for a robot to clean her house — then critics start slinging mud

“Why not hire people who are looking for work to support their families?,” wrote one viewer. “It’s cleaning like how my kids clean. Absolutely not, this would piss me off,” wrote another, while a few likened the robot’s lethargic pace to their husbands’ when asked to do chores.

Others noted the halting gait of the machine, saying it looked like a senior citizen or as if it was suffering from arthritis. “Rosey moved so much better,” said one commenter, referring to the mechanical maid from The Jetsons.

Not exactly autonomous

While several people fussed about the robot taking a job from a human, there actually was a human at work in this case. The robot, from Tau Robotics, is not autonomous. It was operated remotely by an operator at the company.

As Capezio told Storyful, the device made the bed, cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed over the course of an hour. While it was “slower than a person would have been,” the robot did a “solid job,” she said.

Meanwhile, it definitely succeeded in bringing the topic of robot house cleaners to a wider audience, as Capezio’s video has been viewed more than 5.2 million times to date.

A growing field

Tau Robotics isn’t the only company that’s bringing robots into the housecleaning space. Last October, former Wall Street Journal columnist Joanna Stern tested out Neo, a 5-foot-6-inch robot that is produced by 1X Technologies.

That robot, as was the case with Capezio’s humanoid helper, had a human operating it remotely via a VR headset, and it’s now available for pre-order at a price of $20,000.

In that test, the robot was able to grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator and deliver it to Stern, load two glasses and a fork into the dishwasher (taking five minutes to do so) and fold a sweater in two minutes, though Stern noted the job was “not retail ready.”

The pushback to humanoid domestic robots is an extension of the increasing opposition to AI nationwide. A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans were against building data centers in their area.

To counter that, AI companies have been holding open houses to try to convince people of the benefits of the technology. The reaction, much like the comments on Capezio’s post, has been decidedly mixed.