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Be My Eyes

bemyeyes.com

Seems like a really cool idea except for the fact that the main focus seems to be converting The Blind into a new market segment. I’m a little preoccupied but are there examples of this being used for non commercial activity? Or like… compensation for volunteers that facilitate the capture of profit for large companies on behalf of those with a chronic disability? Sorry if this comes across as too cynical but as a person with a disability I immediately question a “volunteer” service with a lot of corporate sponsors/use-cases.

More people than you think are willing to take time out of their day to help others, especially if they can do it simply by answering a facetime call to tell someone what type of soup they're holding. It's a win win, mutual aid.

edit: Sorry, I'm pretty drunk. to answer your more complex query yes the calls I've gotten have all been obviously non commercial. I do agree with the sentiment that safeguards need be carefully considered. like some proof you're blind maybe before you can be a requester for image analysis. I hear your cynicism but the app has been around a long time and it is beyond just pure unbridled mutual aid. it feels great to help and the blind get to temporarily have an eyed friend on hand, on demand. it's a wonderful app, download it and hope you get a call!

I was lucky enough to help Singularity University launch their startup accelerator back in 2015 and have Be My Eyes as a portfolio company.

I say lucky because they were such good people with such a great mission. Hans (founder) and Christian (co-founder) were really, really fun to get to spend ~10 weeks with.

The new CEO is fairly recent so I can't vouch either way for him. Hans and Christian were an absolute joy with incredible hearts.

They used to be open source but closed around the same time they made a partnership with Open AI. Wonderful product though.

Love the few times I get a call! always nice to help a blind person

What does AI add to this process exactly?

If no one answers the blind person quickly enough it may be worth considering the trade off of telling the user asking to borrow a volunteers "eyes" to use a slightly more imperfect vision model rather than wait longer on a human to answer. Speaking nothing to how to calculate for that analysis

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