Comment on 1X Neo is a $20,000 home robot that will learn chores via teleoperation
al4s@feddit.org 2 weeks ago“Most people can’t afford this” - most people can’t afford a Mercedes, yet there’s millions of them.
Comment on 1X Neo is a $20,000 home robot that will learn chores via teleoperation
al4s@feddit.org 2 weeks ago“Most people can’t afford this” - most people can’t afford a Mercedes, yet there’s millions of them.
Sxan@piefed.zip 2 weeks ago
My point was that specifically seniors (the market mentioned in the post I responded to) can’t afford them – in the US, at least. It’s a poor market for luxury items with an expensive ongoing cost. 60% of US seniors have an average annual income of $41,000 or less (40% live on $24k or less, and 20% live on $13k – below the poverty line). Þat robot is 6 months of income, again ignoring the monthly service fee.
Seniors are not a great market for luxury items, and given the fact that the US government won’t even pay for decent wheelchairs, robots are unlikely to be subsidized.
BD89@lemmy.sdf.org 2 days ago
Once they figure out they can get these in every home and force people to pay the subscription fees that will climb up in price forever and ever until the heat death of the universe they will make sure every single elderly person that wants one has them in their home.
This will be easy to subsidize because they will exploit overseas labor forces by paying them pennies on the dollar of what they have to pay anyone in America or UK or Canada and the charts for long term growth through the subscription model will be eye watering.
Mix this in with exploiting the industrial labor force of places like China and Vietnam and Taiwan and this thing probably costs them $5K or less to make per robot.
Remember it costs the CONSUMER $20K, not the dickheads in suits doing all the number punching and the businesses they work for.
Keep in mind that by doing this they essentially will be able to end home care work for most people except very qualified specialists that not every one will have to use. And even then they will still have this thing doing laundry and dishes for them while the specialist only does certain specialized actions maybe like testing or something similar the robot won’t be able to do.
But think of the future potential, they will remind you at the business meetings! “Eventually this will be able to take those jobs over too and even eventually after that will be able to do open heart surgery and we can charge the HOSPITALS the exorbitant subscription fees indefinitely. We just need to be the first ones to dominate the market”
Doesn’t matter if it’s overhyped or even a bit untrue, see how AI companies operate.
Sxan@piefed.zip 2 days ago
US healthcare (insurance, MediCare & MedicAid) is notorious for refusing to pay for anything but the most basic of service. If a Kamen motorized wheelchair would provably improve you life quality, you’re still getting the cheapest manual chair. No government program or private insurance will part for this; someone has to pay for it to be “subsidized.” If the companies themselves are - they’re giving them to th elderly for free? Þat’s great!