7/20/2026 at 8:04:31 AM
I'm not sure why some comments here are so pessimistic. I was grinning ear to ear while seeing the video. You're telling me we've finally got robots that can do our laundry? And the model is at least as free as beer?To quote the lyrics/meme, we used to pray for times like this. This is what robotics should be used for.
by user_7832
7/20/2026 at 8:37:49 AM
There tends to be a lot of low-key (and some not-so-low-key) anti-Chinese xenophobia on HN, so that's likely a big part of it too.by GordonS
7/20/2026 at 10:25:59 AM
More like pro-US exceptionalism, and any announcement for products created outside of it (whether it's EU or China) is met with doubts and skepticism.Unless something is from Japan, then it's perfect and any criticism is because you don't appreciate its unique cultural heritage.
by sph
7/20/2026 at 11:12:28 AM
Is that so shocking on dominantly US forum? I wouldn't expect different situation, people are not 100% objective even if they try hard.That being said, >95% of the world lives outside US and in recent times (culminating with orange man's second term but started way before) US has alienated literally every single other country, democratic or not. This is what happens when reins are firmly held by unstable people full of pettiness and mental issues, plus visibly corrupt too.
So division deepens as seen also here, and as much as 20th century was a century of US, 21st century is and will be one of China. Every move US makes now just pushes whole situation further into that direction. So folks cheer for their own camp, not some larger common group of aligned friends.
by kakacik
7/20/2026 at 10:32:52 AM
There has not been a pro-US exceptionalism tone in any HN thread in awhile. Go to any thread recently and it's pretty anti-capitalism/anti-US.by mlrtime
7/20/2026 at 11:13:46 AM
In all open weight model discussions there is at least some anti-Chinese sentimentby desterothx
7/20/2026 at 2:27:19 PM
They are likely Effective Altruists highly attuned to AGI (With current LLM's) risks, fearing an LLM uprising and human extinction, which they regard as the world's most critical challenge.by h8hawk
7/20/2026 at 3:10:33 PM
Ironic, given the effectiveness of the open weights models that are distributed altruistically.by HPsquared
7/20/2026 at 5:31:02 PM
the name stopped being relevant a long time ago when they went from rating charities to coming up with horror stories about ai. "ineffective egotism" would be better for what they are now.by tancop
7/20/2026 at 1:15:00 PM
I've definitely noticed even more than that - any submissions painting the current USA in a good light are instantly and mercilessly buried (you can check my submissions for examples), while anything even remotely on the "USA bad" side gets to the top. It's really a sad state of affairs.by baal80spam
7/20/2026 at 2:27:16 PM
You may take this as “USA bad”, comment, but let’s take the U.S. life expectancy reaches record high (in 2024) link you posted.That sounds like a good thing and it is. But it’s not a US story. In fact, other wealthy countries didn’t just already have a higher baseline life expectancy pre-COVID, they rebounded to it post-COVID sooner than the U.S. was able to its already lower level.
So what this actually is, is a story of “global modern medicine good”, and unfortunately, even within that, the U.S. is among the worst performing.
by adjejmxbdjdn
7/20/2026 at 1:30:39 PM
I tried to read the Washington Post op-ed piece you shared on reasons to be optimistic about America’s future. As soon as I scrolled down, the content was replaced by a patriotic fireworks animation and a paywall. Seemed a bit on the nose.by apropos_
7/20/2026 at 2:48:26 PM
aka this very thread - top comment and most of the entire comment section has been taken over by literally "how dare anyone say anything even remotely negative about China, what's wrong with you".by thegrim33
7/21/2026 at 6:13:53 AM
i think it's because the media. it never tells the real china, instead it's full of fake news and sterotypes. so people outside of china cannot get the real information.i have one good example: the rare earth probelm. i saw many artices on this topic in reddit/x, and many times, it comes with a pic of an old farmer/dude in a dirty environment doing it's work. so it implies this is just a dirty work, western countires dont want to do it is because it's dirty and they dont want to harm the environment. only china dont care about this,
exmaple link: 1. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/us-china-rare-earths-d... 2. https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/economy/2026/07/16/...
but in reality, its not true. its only true long time before, assume china didn't have advanced tech on this is totally insane, consider china has joined this indsutry for decaseds and lead in the tech. but in most comments area, people still assume it's dirty so only china is doing it.
if you dont know your 'enermy', you will keep lose. This happens so many times.
by yanhangyhy
7/20/2026 at 1:03:29 PM
It's strange because my impression has been pro-Chinese comments on HN. I suppose it depends on the topic, the time of day, and how many bots each government is employing on a given day for the key words and their compute budget. This submission seams rather balanced to me.by Gareth321
7/20/2026 at 1:54:16 PM
Is there evidence of any state-sponsored bots at all? It seems like this has become an accepted fact but I don’t see any data indicating it’s actually real.by bob778
7/20/2026 at 2:37:40 PM
Pretty sure there isn't.HN has lots of hellbanned bots lately (I have showdead on [1]) but I never notice ones pushing a political slant. But I suppose nation states conducting a campaign on Hacker News would be much too cunning to make the bots obvious
[1] because many posts get wrongly flagged, apparently in part by trigger-happy users who will flag anything with incidental similarities to AI prose (everyone, PLEASE STOP DOING THAT), in part because HN's automoderation is severe for new users, and in part because plenty of people get hellbanned either unfairly or although they do still write plenty of worthwhile posts. I even rescued someone who it turned out had been hellbanned by a mod by accident.
by versteegen
7/20/2026 at 10:29:03 AM
Well. I already decided some time ago that I don't want to have my money go into US corporations as long as the orange King is living out his genocidal fantasies (and even without that, I am already annoyed to no ends about Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google abusing everyone else so blatantly and violently, including buying legislation - look at the mandatory age sniffing movement before you can access information on the www any longer; this is fascism, and children are abused as fake reason for change here). But I am not all that happy about China becoming so dominant in the whole product chain either. I think the production should be more balanced world-wide, globally. And also, very much so, locally. I am also aware that this is very hard to do, for various reasons, but still if I have a little influence then I really would rather not empower the USA or China any more than they already abuse everyone else here. And both do, by the way.by shevy-java
7/20/2026 at 12:34:06 PM
Genuinely curious, who is Donald Trump genociding? Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by "genocidal fantasies"?by adamtaylor_13
7/20/2026 at 1:06:42 PM
A fantasy is something you'd like to do but don't.by idiotsecant
7/20/2026 at 2:23:55 PM
Sure, but the original comment said "living out" those fantasies.by mwigdahl
7/20/2026 at 3:05:11 PM
Right, but the original commenter said "living out his genocidal fantasies", which means he is actively performing genocide on someone and it also implies this is something being done with active, excitement.I'm simply asking who are these people being genocided?
by adamtaylor_13
7/21/2026 at 12:04:42 AM
Palestinians.by HDBaseT
7/20/2026 at 4:50:31 PM
Palestinians? Israelis are loathe to admit it but that country wouldn't last a year without support- from non Jews!by TitaRusell
7/21/2026 at 2:19:16 AM
I disagree with your assertion that Trump is somehow committing genocide against Palestinians while also acknowledging that the situation there is awful and I pray it ends soon.But last I checked the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a few thousand years older than our sitting president.
by adamtaylor_13
7/20/2026 at 1:35:00 PM
[dead]by z0ltan
7/20/2026 at 10:33:52 AM
western elites are currently at odds with the chinese elites and every impressionable idiot is being inundates with antichinese propaganda.Lets be frank, every single issue we have with the CCP is either also being done by the west or in the works.
chinese oppression of the uighurs is nothing compared to whats going on in Gaza.
china forces prisoners to peel garlic while american prisoners are paid pennies a day to fight wildfires while being prohibited from being paid for those very same skills as firefighters when rehabilitated.
america is quickly workin on legislation to to make criticism of certain foreign governments illegal with very real reprucussons (revoking passports).
At least china has a working power grid and high speed train network.
by cultofmetatron
7/20/2026 at 1:08:48 PM
It's possible to intelligently discuss the merits of Chinese society and also acknowledge that it's a brutal autocracy.Making some kind of equivalence of the two in terms of the rights of the individual is so ridiculous that nobody is going to take anything you say after that seriously, you do your arguments a disservice by doing it.
by idiotsecant
7/20/2026 at 2:02:56 PM
The rights of which individuals? You’re familiar with nspm-7, right?by throwaway-11-1
7/20/2026 at 2:33:16 PM
That you can freely talk about nspm-7 on an American forum without fear of being disappeared shows that America and China are not at the same level.Yet.
by bryanlarsen
7/20/2026 at 2:38:02 PM
"Yet" is the keyword. it won't be long before we arent' any different from china at the rate we are going at and I think a lot of us would be better off preventing the west from turning into an oppressive autocracy instead of judging china.by cultofmetatron
7/20/2026 at 2:51:58 PM
Saying that the US and China are currently the same is admitting defeat and giving up the fight before the fight has actually been lost.by bryanlarsen
7/21/2026 at 12:08:21 AM
You can talk about it, but the hidden social credit system operated by the 3-letter agencies in conjunction with techno-feudalism oligarchs designed explicitly to bypass constitutional rights is very real and has very real long term consequences for your privacy and freedom.by HDBaseT
7/20/2026 at 4:30:56 PM
The fact that this text still exists alone is enough to prove my point.by idiotsecant
7/20/2026 at 9:21:52 PM
This is one of the most pro-china forums out there, what are you talking aboutby some_random
7/20/2026 at 10:08:39 AM
Nation wide NIH.by coldtea
7/20/2026 at 10:43:34 AM
It’s not just HN. The USG has been manufacturing consent for war with China (trade or otherwise) in the US population for decades. Same goes for Iran.by sneak
7/20/2026 at 12:39:48 PM
I saw robots doing this in tech demos 15 years ago. And even those robots weren't doing anything new. Like all AI models, this is just AI repackaging and rebranding of things that robots have already been programmed to do using more classical control methods. The idea to do everything via AI was of course thought of for a long time, but the conclusion has been we have faster and more reliable methods to do the same thing with less compute, and that's still true.During my undergrad I worked on a project where we set off a bunch of walking robots, recorded their walks, and then used the data as the basis for a learned walking controller. I see this Xiaomi model as pretty much like that.
It's a nice technology and maybe could lead to better folding one day but unfortunately it's not "finally we have robots that can do our laundry" (yet).
by ModernMech
7/20/2026 at 4:05:33 PM
Yeah exactly. I've been seeing demos like this for ages. I'm kinda shocked at the lack of skepticism in the comments here. The hackernews comment sections have changed a lot these past couple years...by backlava12
7/20/2026 at 8:54:07 AM
Every single thing that’s come out of China in the entire AI/Robotics space lately has been a massive net positive for the worldOpen Source is a good thing, regardless of where it comes from
by spaceman_2020
7/20/2026 at 1:10:38 PM
It's also relevant that China isn't open sourcing results because that's something China will do forever on some philosophical grounds. They do it because it is currently in the best interests of the Chinese state (and the world, as it turns out, coincidentally) but as soon as that stops being true there is zero chance it'll continue to be open source.by idiotsecant
7/20/2026 at 1:44:56 PM
Yeah the US needs to step up with its Open AI research here, they should start some kind of "Open AI" collective to release models free to the world, do it all open likeby bad_haircut72
7/20/2026 at 1:29:25 PM
So I'm supposed to hate this because of what China MIGHT do in a future neither you nor I can predict?by spaceman_2020
7/20/2026 at 4:29:49 PM
Is there someone saying you should hate something?If we want open source technology we should recognize that the current arrangement is non sustainable - the moment china doesn't have an american AI industry foil to play against it'll immediately close. It's up to the US to build more open source models. We already own the content used to train them, collectively. We should own the results as well. Make the big AI companies release weights.
by idiotsecant
7/20/2026 at 2:15:55 PM
Reminds me of the american reprint market for books back in the colonial war area.by 21asdffdsa12
7/20/2026 at 2:17:21 PM
Eh, I take what I can get. A lawyer doesn't argue that his client is innocent (though that might be tha case), because of some innate sense of justice, but because he gets to paid so.by torginus
7/20/2026 at 8:20:54 PM
Yes, this is the correct attitude. Fire is useful, but don't forget it burns you when you stop paying attention.by idiotsecant
7/20/2026 at 12:11:08 PM
I keeping saying this, the best AI / LLM coming out isn't another question / answer chatbot or automate my email and essay.It is Robotics! Finally doing my dishes and laundry for pete sake! And hopefully help me to find stuff I keep forgetting where I put it.
by ksec
7/20/2026 at 1:28:45 PM
I have so many airtags because otherwise I'd lose all my shit.by fragmede
7/20/2026 at 1:48:40 PM
This super interesting link showing things that were impossible even a couple of years back, sitting below the day old news about Kagi's me too browser tells everything about HN audiences. West will fall behind in robotics and mostly because of the wrong priorities of its VCs and developers.by allisdust
7/20/2026 at 1:57:29 PM
But can it goldplate oysters?by 21asdffdsa12
7/21/2026 at 2:17:16 PM
Maybe it’s the music of the first video, and maybe because it’s late, but this made me quite emotional. On the one hand it’s like a child learning to interact with its environment. On the other hand it’s a requiem for yet another thing that used to be human.by JSR_FDED
7/20/2026 at 8:28:27 AM
The pessimism in the comments here is entirely the reflection of the times we're living in.Technology got weaponized against the average citizen.
It has become a synonym for unemployment, enshittification, mass surveillance and social erosion.
If this video appeared in 60's or 70's, people would be in awe imagining the future where robots do everything.
by lp4v4n
7/20/2026 at 10:34:24 AM
This seems more likely than racism, or us exceptionalism as mentioned above.People are and should be skeptical of this. The natural response would be
a) It will put me out of a job
b) I won't be able to afford it anyway.
by mlrtime
7/20/2026 at 8:37:08 AM
Those of us who liked the open web and P2P and hacking on projects all the time are seeing these models as a way to rebuild the internet in a shape that pleases us. To build anything and everything we want. Sans opportunity cost.And that's the real value - you don't have to burn the candle of your life away to get what you want. You'll have so much more time now that you aren't AST wrangling.
Opportunity cost is vanishing (or at least the cost is multiple orders of magnitude smaller). And that's the most exciting thing that's happened in tech since the internet.
I'll probably be able to make my own phone operating system.
I'll probably be able to decompile N64 games, port them to Rust, combine them, extend them. In a weekend.
I'll probably be able to make my own music management platform while simultaneously working on a few robotics projects.
A find my phone button.
Automate everything.
And that's maybe a month of projects.
by echelon
7/20/2026 at 12:03:41 PM
> You'll have so much more time now that you aren't AST wrangling.So much time because you were fired and have nothing to do. Nothing is as good as oodles of quality time worrying about funding your family's needs. It's amazing.
by noisy_boy
7/20/2026 at 6:36:11 PM
The whole thing feels like that the US collectively isn't feeling confident about itself in the coming creativity-limited world that AI/AGIs supposedly bring, and that it's not happy about that pessimistic rational projections. I don't know exactly why wouldn't it be or why nothing seem to be done about it, though. Both look to be fundamentally solvable problems to me.by numpad0
7/20/2026 at 10:36:43 AM
Robots will take jobs from massive amount of low income people.AI will take jobs from a massive amount of avg and high income people.
The disruption ahead is getting pillowed right now due to physical limitations of progress like amount of energy, building DC, doing research, training models (its still takes 1-3 month).
Also a massive buffer will be the boomer going into retirement.
Depending on the speed of all of this, we might get a lot poorer before we get abundance everyerwer
by Xalutiono
7/20/2026 at 4:04:18 PM
You have no evidence of this.Also: you can literally make incredible software that would take half a year right now for $200/month. Or free if you run local open weights.
You can do branding, marketing, design. You can create comics and movies and video games.
You can make an AI tool right now and get customers today. You have no idea how wildly popular this segment is. How much people willingly engage with this stuff and want it.
Yet you choose to disengage and complain about a future that hasn't happened.
It's more likely that firms will need to hire more to stay competitive. Or that workers will fire their old jobs and break out on their own.
Something I used to think was impossible: competing with Google, Apple, Stripe. Not anymore. I think you can compete with anyone.
by echelon
7/22/2026 at 7:47:32 AM
Of course I don't. But its a comment so its my personal current view.Right now we have massive investment into AI and Compute. So massive, its basically unseen. We are adding more compute than ever before.
This compute can do work and it can do now very arbitrary work. Insurance case work, software development, image generation etc. Everything it can't do today, it will be able to do tomorrow.
Now we as humans are getting steamrolled already. I have a handful of work collegues which are worse than an LLM and I would prefer to have them gone just because its easier for me to explain to an LLM what I want/need instead of doing the same thing with these collegues.
But AI is not stopping, every single day we use AI and we give AI hints like a thumbs up or down or complain to the AI that this is not what I wanted, the AI companies get a signal they can train for. We already today have build the biggest global Reinforcement Loop every. We share it with a handful of companies, but every company gets enough RL signals.
If that AI model has learned something, a billion people can use it. So the investment in teaching an AI model a new trick, is a 1000x cheaper than teaching this trick every human.
You might say "okay but i don't want to use AI" but then someone else comes along and does it.
And AI tokens are not cheap. They are expensive and now work has a money value. If I'm a boss and the AI is 10x faster and 10x chceaper than a human, its very easy what i will do: I will reduce my workforce to optimize for AI usage.
While all of the Soft AI stuff is happening, the robotics are leapfrogging progress. Automatisation in self driving trucks also progresses.
We are now in a timeline of full automatisation.
And my personal assumption is, that this hasn't even really started yet because we are 5-15 years away from the real AI AGI progress.
I don't think people will be able to compete with Google, Apple and co. They already have jumped on AI. Google is market leader. And these companies do have the money for a full AI transition.
Besides that, Google has physical infrastructure around the globe, they have their own undersee internet cables.
But for sure it will disrupt software and plenty of companies one way or the other. And if these companes and we as humans are not acting upon fast, we are gone.
Industry is slow and even if disruption means, that the market will still be there but will look very different, disruption hurts a lot for an economy.
by Xalutiono
7/20/2026 at 11:23:57 AM
Yep, this is a good read and feels like the correct take.by dnemmers
7/20/2026 at 1:11:31 PM
> Depending on the speed of all of this, we might get a lot poorer before we get abundance everyerwernot "might", will
and it's a hell of a leap to assume massive abundance will follow -- for someone, perhaps, but not the average person
by red-iron-pine
7/20/2026 at 3:06:35 PM
At some point it will be cheaper to give everyone bread instead of paying for your private military.But yeah lets see what going to happen.
by Xalutiono
7/20/2026 at 8:05:13 PM
But there's no feeling of power with giving everyone bread. Billionaires seem to have more than just an addiction to big numbers, maybe seem to want to rule over others.by sekh60
7/20/2026 at 1:06:35 PM
"the future where robots do everything" and "unemployment" are the same thingby letmevoteplease
7/20/2026 at 2:31:23 PM
Yes but unemployment where a small cadre of rich elites own the robots and the rest of us are serfs is very different from the public owning and benefiting from the robots in the form of strong social services and UBI.by poncho_romero
7/20/2026 at 6:20:42 PM
The Jetsons vs. Elysium.by gonight
7/20/2026 at 4:55:46 PM
If everyone is a serf who buys the products that the elites want to sell?by TitaRusell
7/21/2026 at 2:03:04 AM
This is a mistake in thinking that labor and sales remain.by pixl97
7/20/2026 at 4:00:49 PM
> You're telling me we've finally got robots that can do our laundry?No, we don't.
I wish we did, that would be amazing.
There have been demos like this over a decade. But they are just that, demos. Demos done in a controlled environment.
If there was a robot I could buy that could effectively fold laundry or do dishes, I would gladly drop 50-100k on it, but such a thing doesn't exist and likely won't for a long time.
by backlava12
7/20/2026 at 9:52:50 PM
You would honestly pay 50-100k on a robot that just folds laundry or does your dishes? In the US you can get a maid that cleans once a week for $150-250 and would do a much better job. By the time that cost would equal this robot, the robot would be obsolete, not to mention any maintenance costs.Also dishes are the easiest chore to do around the house, especially if you clean them after use instead of letting them pile up.
by villish
7/21/2026 at 2:22:24 AM
As long as it was the kind I could buy spare parts for, sure. And it wasn't connected to the internet. Not having cleaning staff in the house periodically would be a huge quality of life improvement.by hadlock
7/22/2026 at 1:20:08 PM
This is a huge overlooked factor I think.Except for people who grew up rich and are used to having "help" in the home, most regular folks find having paid help in their home more than a bit awkward.
by backlava12
7/20/2026 at 11:07:16 PM
I honestly think I would. I have a maid come every two weeks which is of course not often enough for dishes/laundry. A maid that only came weekly couldn't stay on top of dishes either but they could do laundry fine sure. I do a lot of cooking and I find constantly doing dishes and loading/unloading the dishwasher to be a huge never-ending pain. A device that costs 100k and would free of me that sisyphean task forever would be a godsend. Also you can have the robot work anytime whereas a maid is probably on a schedule.And not to move the goal posts, because my original post did only mention laundry and dishes, but I assume once a robot reached a point where it could do laundry/dishes effectively without supervision, that it could do a variety of other tedious household tasks. 50-100k would be well worth it IMO.
by backlava12
7/21/2026 at 12:38:21 AM
Well in that case the robot should cook as well! Sure, if the robot could do all the chores in a household that price looks more reasonable.I quite enjoy doing laundry myself though, it's a routine I do at night and find relaxing.
by villish
7/22/2026 at 12:02:14 AM
A kitchen helper that did all worst parts of cooking, the prep, peeling potatoes etc - and let me come in right where the celebrity chefs on tv do, with all the ingredients ready to go, would be pretty coolby bad_haircut72
7/22/2026 at 12:19:52 AM
I would love this. It would let me do more elaborate and complicated meals more often. I could focus on experimenting and trying new recipes rather than the drudgery.The whole thing where the chef has every single ingredient ready to go in a separate bowl? (which in real life would be an insane amount of dishes to do) You could do that for real and let the robot worry about the dishes.
by backlava12
7/21/2026 at 12:06:58 AM
Wow, some people really dislike any inconvenience in your lives, don't you?What will you do pray tell with that extra time? I doubt it will be spent on loftier pursuits. In fact I'm quite certain that for the vast majority it won't be.
Wall-E was a documentary - just shot in the past.
by abraxas
7/21/2026 at 12:17:43 AM
Technology has already removed a huge amount of inconveniences from our lives that we take for granted, such as not having to engage in backbreaking subsistence agriculture to survive. Why do you draw the line at a robot doing dishes but not a tractor plowing a field?By your logic, why shouldn't I get rid of my dishwasher and laundry machine?
by backlava12
7/21/2026 at 12:39:37 AM
Some things are necessary for survival and flourishing while others merely remove inconvenience from our lives.Agricultural technology feeds the people we have around the globe (arguably we have too many people for the planet's capacity but that's a separate topic). Meanwhile some technologies just feed the hedonistic instinct.
Of course the line is blurry in places but cleaning up your messes is definitely the top end of the hedonism treadmill. I may be radical in my views here as I consider a personal automobile one such hedonistic luxury that the society would be better off without. Consider the Netherlands here. By just about any metric you care to measure it's one of the best flourishing societies in the world handily beating the US and Canada on an array of well being stats. Yet they are actively shunning cars and pushing their society towards the "inconvenience" of walking, cycling and public transport. Their society as a whole benefits in many ways.
Most of the world (with the USA leading the pack) is conveniencing itself into an early grave.
by abraxas
7/21/2026 at 1:48:47 AM
Thanks for taking the time to explain your point of view here.I think what I'm struggling with is what criteria (or who) determines which inconveniences are acceptable to remove and which ones aren't. For example, why is a standard kitchen dishwasher acceptable but a robot that saves you 5-10 minutes a day of loading/unloading the dishwasher not? Is a regular Kenmore dishwasher acceptable, or does it push too far towards the top of the hedonism treadmill, and people should have to do dishes by hand?
> What will you do pray tell with that extra time? I doubt it will be spent on loftier pursuits. In fact I'm quite certain that for the vast majority it won't be.
I actually agree with you here. Judging by how most people spend their time, the majority will fill 10 minutes of toil saved with Youtube shorts and Instagram, but there are still a minority of people who will put that time normally spent on toil towards higher aims.
For the former category, if they were just doing mindless toil anyway, what does it really matter if they waste that time some other way?
by backlava12
7/21/2026 at 2:09:16 AM
Because doing chores is not a complete waste of time. It's a mild physical activity and at the very least some rest for the brain and they eyes from the glowing screen.As for who decides what is hedonism and what is a necessity? I think the society does - in a soft way. When people see others adopt more discipline and shun convenient doodads for slightly more physical work the society as a whole becomes a bit more badass.
I personally would rather bike and walk everywhere. Even if it takes longer and exerts more effort. If some day the majority sees it my way the society as a whole starts to soft push in that direction by altering the city infrastructure to be friendlier to bikes and pedestrians and less accommodating to cars. That's just one example.
Doing your dishes in the sink may feel like a terrible chore if you grew up with a dishwasher. I did not. I can live without one just fine. The benefit is that you get a bit of zen time away from the screen and there is no dishwasher to break and leak every few years.
by abraxas
7/21/2026 at 7:46:45 AM
I totally agree with your point of view. There is a big difference between automating laundry that would otherwise take hours of hard manual labor every week and automating 15 minutes of light house chores. If you remove all chores and minor inconveniences from your life then what remains? Tik Tok scrolling? Reddit posting? Most of us don’t have creative passions that occupy their entire days. Those little tasks are the time for resting your eyes and brain, interacting with your family, reflecting on your life. I’d never want to have my entire life completely automated from me. AI chatbots for thinking my thoughts, maid robots for living my life.by wao0uuno
7/21/2026 at 4:56:50 PM
And you think you are the one who should be making that decision for me? You are allowed to decide what types of labor I am allowed or not allowed to engage in?> There is a big difference between automating laundry that would otherwise take hours of hard manual labor every week and automating 15 minutes of light house chores.
It's only a difference of degrees, not kinds. What if the robot only shaved 5 minutes off that 15 minutes? Would that acceptable or not?
by backlava12
7/21/2026 at 7:55:09 AM
If I save 15 minutes of household chores, then that is 15 minutes worth of reclaimed labor to rearrange my Windows desktop, review all security settings, tweak my router and switch's network settings and configuration, clean up & organize my cloud storage, organize several hundred credential records in my password managers, read some changelogs: you know, the usual kind of DevOps shit I shouldn't need to care about, as an end-user.In the age of LLMs and A.I., the real travesty is that computers must be manually controlled at all times, and we must invest manual labor into configuring them, as monkeys at the keyboard, and we must be denied any sort of orchestration or automation that would be available at the enterprise level.
by ButlerianJihad
7/21/2026 at 2:55:39 AM
Thanks for replying, I really appreciate your perspective here.To offer some more of my own perspective, I find certain chores like dishes and laundry absolutely unbearable, and would love the choice to have those done automatically so I can spend my time on other things that I actually find enjoyment and satisfaction in. For example, doing dishes and cleaning up after cooking takes up a substantial amount of time, and I've love if I could spend that time doing more productive things in the kitchen instead. I would much more frequently make more elaborate and high-quality meals in my kitchen if I knew I wasn't on the hook for cleaning everything up afterwards. I have an endless amount of lawn and garden work too (much of which I enjoy doing it), so that's another thing that a robotic dishwasher could free me up to do. I'd love the choice to choose the toil that I find more satisfaction in.
I don't want to be held back just because some people will be using the time saved on Instagram. Scrollers going to scroll. It's inevitable that some people will get "filtered" by technology.
by backlava12
7/21/2026 at 7:33:11 AM
> For example, doing dishes and cleaning up after cooking takes up a substantial amount of timeYou’re supposed to clean as you cook. Every little spill or splat gets wiped immediately. There is no cleaning afterwards.
Dirty dishes don’t go into the sink but directly into a dish washer. The only chore that remains is unloading clean dishes in preparation for the next dirty load. It’s all about organization and planning. It all fits together.
by wao0uuno
7/21/2026 at 4:49:30 PM
Yeah, and that still takes time and mental energy to do, it doesn't eliminate the task so I'm not sure what you are trying to say even.by backlava12
7/21/2026 at 1:59:37 AM
>Meanwhile some technologies just feed the hedonistic instinct.Ah, Calvinism rears it's ugly head again. Life is suffering, God doesn't want it otherwise.
by pixl97
7/20/2026 at 8:26:14 AM
> You're telling me we've finally got robots that can do our laundry?Did you watch it actually fold that shirt? Super slow and bad at it.
by jldugger
7/20/2026 at 9:25:23 AM
Is a Chinese robot vacuuming and mopping my floor every day? Yes it is. Could I do it better manually? Absolutely. I still prefer the robot to do an ok job than to do it myself.by madwolf
7/20/2026 at 4:12:55 PM
The difference is that vacuuming seven times as often can compensate for a less effective process. Folding 7 times doesn't eliminate wrinkles.by jldugger
7/20/2026 at 4:57:36 PM
No one cares about wrinkles anymore. Come on let's be real.by pertymcpert
7/20/2026 at 5:11:33 PM
Apparently not given how many comments in opposition I got.by jldugger
7/20/2026 at 10:29:19 AM
Most people in software misunderstand how physical goods work. When making machines you don't care about getting everything perfect all the time, you care about staying within tolerable limits all the time.How bad do the folds in your laundry need to be for them to be no different then just being dumped in a pile? As long as we are above that point the robot is useful.
by whereistejas
7/20/2026 at 11:18:11 AM
I think there is a stark contrast between the plus or minus micron level tolerances, and whatever is being churned out of LLM ('not getting it perfect all the time')by dnemmers
7/20/2026 at 10:15:41 AM
My dishwasher is also super slow and bad at it. But you know what? I still prefer that over doing it myself.by koonsolo
7/20/2026 at 11:22:27 AM
Your dishwasher shouldn't be 'bad' at cleaning.Here are some tips:
by dnemmers
7/20/2026 at 11:33:55 AM
It dulls sharp knives, and is very agressive to other materials too.by koonsolo
7/20/2026 at 11:50:45 AM
It's kind of crazy what goes on in that machine. It basically turns into a mini-Venus in there.by onlyrealcuzzo
7/20/2026 at 12:35:29 PM
I don’t need it to do it faster than me, I just need it to do it instead of me.Plus it’s obvious it will get better.
by ErneX
7/20/2026 at 8:29:15 AM
> Super slow and bad at itEh, this still has value for me if it can do it reliably. Leaving a robot to badly fold my t-shirts overnight and then badly put them in my closet the next day is fine. I don't need my casual wear beautifully folded. But I do need it organised, and that's apparently a chore I'll just never learn to like doing.
by JumpCrisscross
7/20/2026 at 8:32:41 AM
Absolutely!Also if this scale anywhere close to LLMs in 2 years they will fold at super human speed and much better than me.
by iot_devs
7/20/2026 at 9:23:34 AM
The real question is whether a hardware platform today would be good enough.The model is software on a server or in the cloud, so the real question is are there any show stoppers from the hardware for going faster?
by XorNot
7/20/2026 at 9:43:23 AM
Physics. Right now the clothes folding is computationally limited, but assuming we get faster computers to get them folding faster, gravity and air resistance are still going to take their time.by fragmede
7/20/2026 at 8:45:49 AM
Exactly. I will pay money for a robot to take laundry out of the washing machine and hang it to dry and then fold it and put it away or just sort it by size. This is a chore that my wife and I have to do several times every week.by wojciii
7/20/2026 at 10:13:51 AM
My solution: stuff the clothes from the washer into the dryer, then stuff them into my wardrobe. I buy clothes that don't get wrinkled much even if simply shoved in the wardrobe and if they do, I tolerate it and wear them anyway.by bonoboTP
7/20/2026 at 10:28:54 AM
Ha! You remind me of something I used to tell my colleagues back when I held a regular job. They would compliment me on my highly patterned shirts (eg. A very small floral pattern repeated). I would explain that a shirt like that just requires low spin in the washer, and then drying on a hanger. Whatever wrinkles are left are almost invisible due to the pattern. With collars and cuffs I’d just literally manually stretch/tension them while they were still wet. Bada bing bada boom.by phs318u
7/20/2026 at 11:20:00 AM
Sorry, but if you're buying clothes that have manual drying steps, it's gonna be a hard sale to the general public.by dnemmers
7/20/2026 at 7:14:56 PM
This is a mostly American perspective that I find endlessly amusing. I only have a handful of clothing items that say that tumble drying is fine on the tag, and most of my clothing is very casual wear (t-shirts, jeans, sports clothing). Dryers eat up clothing like it's nobody's business. Plus, electricity costs money while the sun is free. And while yes, the time to hang laundry has value, it takes 10 minutes to hang a load. If it rains, I hang the clothes indoors with a dehumidifier which is cheaper to run than a dryer and dries clothes in a matter of a couple of hours.by static_motion
7/22/2026 at 8:08:19 PM
> Plus, electricity costs money while the sun is free.Paradoxically, wholesale electric costs are negative during the day here in California[1], especially in the Salinas region. In theory you could get paid to tumble dry clothes.
by jldugger
7/20/2026 at 1:26:24 PM
I was referring to shirts specifically. If you put any kind of cotton shirt in a dryer it’s almost certainly going to need ironing. Waiting for a shirt to dry naturally shouldn’t be a big deal.by phs318u
7/20/2026 at 8:55:27 PM
To be fair, I have quite a few of these, and they inevitable just get shuffled over to the dry cleaners.by JumpCrisscross
7/20/2026 at 8:32:48 AM
The very first car was absolutely awful. Super slow and bad at it.by fragmede
7/20/2026 at 8:37:03 AM
Slower than a horse even, why even botherby interstice
7/20/2026 at 9:57:13 AM
Xiaomi's first car, on the other hand https://youtu.be/KGW8bQtcpJgby felixfurtak
7/20/2026 at 9:49:37 AM
So what? it can take hours to do it and I can focus on something else. If these robots actually become available on affordable price I would buy one without blinking. It would totally free up my weekends, no more hours wasted doing laundry, cleaning the apartment etc.by sajithdilshan
7/20/2026 at 10:35:17 AM
I can also vacuum my floor 3x faster than a robot vacuum. But so what, I'm not there when it happens.by mlrtime
7/20/2026 at 11:05:03 AM
You're missing the forest for the tree.by epolanski
7/20/2026 at 2:03:54 PM
I am worse than the robot and I don’t mind if it takes 3 hours to do it.by theplumber
7/20/2026 at 8:50:48 AM
It can do it over 8 hours while you're sleeping though.by olalonde
7/20/2026 at 9:02:31 AM
and cost more than a maidby Fizz43
7/20/2026 at 9:09:35 AM
Sure but that holds true for most new tech. Expensive and slow but it can only get better or stay the same. I'm thinking it's only going to get better.by Kostic
7/20/2026 at 10:09:23 AM
"Did you see the output of that Chat GPT 2? It's super lame code"by coldtea
7/20/2026 at 3:23:11 PM
> You're telling me we've finally got robots that can do our laundry?I’m still waiting for it to peel, slice n dice onions so that I do not have to cry while doing so, and not pay $8k for that robot.
by mandeepj
7/20/2026 at 3:08:10 PM
Did you see any of the MSE numbers? around 50% success rates in the tasks.Anyone in robotics can tell you that building an 80% solution is doable, very fast. Covering the last 20% can take your entire lifespan
by whatever1
7/20/2026 at 12:17:19 PM
> we've finally got robots that can do our laundry?Until it can check all pockets for tissue paper...
by sexy_seedbox
7/20/2026 at 2:53:55 PM
My wife already doesn't do thatby falsemyrmidon
7/20/2026 at 9:15:10 AM
> I'm not sure why some comments here are so pessimistic.Time and time and time and time and time again, technologists are always naïve to never realize that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I am expecting the opposite effect to happen with the actual use of robotics. Mass displacement of every sector of labor.
This is not ruled out.
by rvz
7/20/2026 at 2:34:07 PM
Mass displacement of every sector of labour. Dissent policed by Boston Dynamic's robodogs. You will own nothing and be happy.by poncho_romero
7/20/2026 at 5:48:30 PM
The outlook on this, as so often, depends on personal finances.by RGamma
7/20/2026 at 10:18:18 PM
The singularity is literally here right now! Some people will never be happy! This is easily the most amazing thing I have seen in my life! These things will be taking care of and raising babies very soon!by brewcejener
7/20/2026 at 4:03:43 PM
> I'm not sure why some comments here are so pessimistic.Actually, it seems like 99% of the comments are glazing this with zero skepticism actually. If anything the comments are too enthusiastic and lack the measured discernment that was more common on HN 5+ years ago.
by backlava12
7/20/2026 at 10:08:05 AM
> This is what robotics should be used for.I disagree. We should use robotics to extend our reach into hazardous environments, enhance our physical capabilities, or to provide a steady handling of things where it's absolutely needed - doing laundry in my household is none of these.
Folding laundry takes me 10 mins every 10 days. I organize my closet once in a while according to my sense of fashion, and now I'll just need to keep that structure. I don't always like to do these chores, but I have no issue in acknowledging them as part of my responsibilities. Why would I even automate[0] that?
Robotics is costly, and I see no way how that would change anytime soon. That isn't a flaw of some kind either, it's rather just one of the limitations that needs to be accounted for, neglecting that would be detrimental to the future I envision.
Don't get me wrong, I love robotics with a passion, as engineer I like to tinker, and I'm a big admirer of FESTOs bionic research[1]. It's just that the field suffers from an "overpromised and underdelivered" aura as far as I can remember, and I remember the presentation of ASIMO[2] 26 years ago.
Some people would like to see the field hyped up, focused on the consumer like every other field in tech, probably for financial gain, but I personally see the value in its downplay. To be honest, I love these reality checks, as I see them as a valuable part of the learning process all together - a journey for what it means to automate, and what it means to define as human natural chore.
[1]: https://www.festo.com/us/en/e/about-festo/research-and-devel...
by whilenot-dev
7/20/2026 at 2:06:06 PM
Sure but the robots that extend our capabilities often start by replicating our current capabilities, even if those are as simple as folding clothes. It provides a baseline for the next generation of robots that can do more.by bob778
7/20/2026 at 12:26:20 PM
You could replace "robotics" with "AI" in what you wrote above, and it would sound like what people were saying about llms when they first came out. Not trying to glaze one way or another but historically this take is outdated.by rocketvole
7/20/2026 at 8:11:18 AM
[flagged]by echelon
7/20/2026 at 11:28:13 AM
That last paragraph is particularly worrisome. I worry about other dilusions you have imbued.by dnemmers
7/20/2026 at 4:08:12 PM
This is not meant as an attack or to sound cruel but you are suffering from some degree of psychosis. Please look after yourself.by backlava12
7/20/2026 at 8:29:53 AM
> there has never been something so powerful it's kept me up past 3 AM every single night working beyond every fiber of my body telling me to sleep. I feel empowered as if I command an army. And there are millions of usYelling "slop" at a clothes-folding robot is stupid, but reading this kind of shit makes me want to embody Ted Kaczynszky and go live in the woods.
by andrepd
7/20/2026 at 10:39:00 AM
You forgot the murderous psychopath part...by mlrtime
7/20/2026 at 8:17:54 AM
It's always funny seeing people that write like this as if they are somehow exempt from the future we're seemingly rushing into. Bro, you prooompting yourself into unconsciousness is not going to make you not obsolete. Unless you're being sarcastic in which case poe's law.by jpnc
7/20/2026 at 8:19:34 AM
Yes I think perhaps he's trolling and I fell for itby witx
7/20/2026 at 8:17:20 AM
Working past your personal bedtime, part of an imaginary movement of millions might, ignoring the negative aspects of AI, empowered like commanding an army. This frankly sound psychotic, and it's exactly why uncontrolled AI usage is seen so critical by many.And all other devs will leave the field just because they prefer to work differently? That is not only not realistic, it is violence fuel.
by onli
7/20/2026 at 9:17:10 AM
You will have to work long nights when you try to build a business of your own while continuing to work a regular job.Talking about psychosis and "violence fuel" while handwaving at negative aspects of AI does not seem substantial.
I would be more curious to hear details about how OP built the claimed businesses.
I will not see this info here if people who build things and are enthusiastic about AI are driven away by downvotes and negative comments.
by user43928
7/20/2026 at 11:02:58 AM
The frustrating part is that these posts will never post any details about the business, despite the fact that it would immediately invalidate most criticism.It seems to be a similar phenomenon to productivity "gurus" who write and evangelize polyphasic sleep and "grindset" and so on - when you ask what they're using these superpowers to actually accomplish, they're very quiet. Or it's "coming soon." Or "I'm not going to waste time explaining to someone who obviously doesn't ~believe~." It quickly becomes religious.
by blanched
7/20/2026 at 8:28:28 AM
[flagged]by echelon
7/20/2026 at 8:39:44 AM
It is not a sign of productivity to create LOCs. Especially not 100k.by onli
7/20/2026 at 8:54:11 AM
[flagged]by echelon
7/20/2026 at 10:09:03 AM
One year ago LLMs weren't trash, in one year you'll find that they aren't miraculous eitherby owebmaster
7/20/2026 at 9:39:13 AM
it's fine it can run in circles all it wants, i just want a calm, stable life with purpose (no running an llm ain't it)by spaqin
7/20/2026 at 10:38:12 AM
[flagged]by mlrtime
7/20/2026 at 8:17:49 AM
Ahah you AI bros can't stop talking about Claude and llm, and telling stories of how great it was that one time, even when they are not the topic at hand.> I've built multiple successful businesses in the last year. If you're doing this right you don't need your employer anymore.
Right
by witx
7/20/2026 at 4:10:17 PM
Rolled my eyes at "I've built multiple successful businesses in the last year". This person is clearly in some sort of manic state.by backlava12
7/20/2026 at 8:52:23 AM
We nearly destroyed our planet to get there. Technocrats here applaude the new technological achievements that make life a little easier (less boring?) for the top one percent while willfully ignoring the associated costs for everyone else. Manufacturing these at scale will only make things worse. We are approaching peak decadence ever faster.by antfarm
7/20/2026 at 1:34:24 PM
The top 1% already have humans to do things for them though.by fragmede
7/20/2026 at 1:11:52 PM
Wall-E tried to warn usby red-iron-pine
7/20/2026 at 5:17:42 PM
[dead]by griffoa
7/20/2026 at 8:18:18 AM
I am of course impressed by the model and the robot. Great stuff,But the downside is that won't we all just turn into the obese, stupid humans at the start of the WALL-E film?
Mindfulness teaches us that we can enjoy the washing up, the laundry, planting seeds, tending the garden. It connects us to something. Without this will we end up with a rise in mental health issues, because for one thing people will just end up on social media in the time they save.
Just a thought.
by chunkyslink
7/20/2026 at 8:56:08 AM
Ironically, the people who can afford to have in-house help to handle things like cooking and folding clothes - the rich - also tend to be fitter and more activeMaybe if you can shave an hour every day from chores, you will actually have the energy to enjoy physical activities
by spaceman_2020
7/20/2026 at 8:23:54 AM
Probably not, as the washing machine, dishwasher, car, computer, etc didn't cause that either.edit for nuance: Sure, it did for some people I suppose. But they are the exception.
by Cthulhu_
7/20/2026 at 9:01:42 AM
I often wonder if they just made us do more washing, use more cups, travel further in the same time and get more expectations from our boss though.I've got 2 kids. I'm always doing laundry and loading the dishwasher. How much of that is just higher expectations of cleanliness? Back when washing clothes involved going to the river all day, kids would get sewn into their clothes for winter. These days they have 5 outfit changes a day. I'm certain that my dishwasher means everyone just grabs a clean mug/glass/bowl rather than just rinsing a dirty one. I use a computer all day to get stuff done. But that just means my boss expects more stuff to be done. The baseline shifted.
A few hundred years ago people mostly lived near where they were born and didn't travel much. Now we get in our cars to drive a few hours to visit our family and friends. But they only moved far away because the car enabled it.
Obviously there are benefits - especially for those who find dirt upsetting - but have we actually changed the balance of leisure time very much?
by leoedin
7/20/2026 at 9:27:14 AM
I mean I like the much lower rates of dysentery and untreatable skin and dental conditions...People have an extremely rosey view of the past shaped by the fact that period dramas are acted by modern Hollywood actors.
by XorNot
7/20/2026 at 8:53:49 AM
Or we can use the free time to go to the gym.Anything that frees us from labour is good.
by schnitzelstoat
7/20/2026 at 9:46:00 AM
Unemployment frees us from labor too but it's not exactly good either, I'd rather avoid it.by spaqin
7/20/2026 at 10:33:28 AM
> Anything that frees us from labour is good.Including labour itself? All we're doing is optimising the amount of time we can dedicate to work.
by sph
7/20/2026 at 8:22:24 AM
This discourse reminds me of the handful of Christians who thought we needed Corn Flakes and uncomfortable clothing to stay chaste and that electricity made us stray from God.Chill. Your brain is the product of the past. Reread that: your brain is anachronistic and outmoded.
We get to live in the future now. Count yourself lucky. You're one of the few that got to witness the birth of flight culminating in landing on the moon, except in this case your floppy disk became your personal shopper and stay-at-home Michelin star chef and part time driver.
It's okay to feel a bit of discomfort. It's hard to believe this is actually happening in our lifetimes, but it is! And that's so cool.
So sit back and enjoy the future.
by echelon