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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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?)...
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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
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?
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.
>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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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?
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.
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.
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’ve trained my own deepseek derivative so I’m familiar with structuring the data
I think it’s lame you try and downplay a company because they aren’t SF based and 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
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
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.
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".
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?
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.