Mr. Robot

“I’d like to start today with the promise and peril of robots that look like humans.

 

Scientists and entrepreneurs are working tirelessly toward a strange goal: robots that look like us. Why, if we just want them to unburden our lives, do we need that? It’s a question for philosophers as much as for inventors.

 

But you can see the market appeal. A robot vacuum cleaner can’t climb stairs to clean an upstairs room. A robot arm that loads boxes in a factory can’t make you a cocktail. You’d hate to arrive for a hair appointment and see that your colorist resembles a spider made of Legos and wire, even if its work is top-tier.

 

Humanoid robots can already do some humanlike things, of course. They can dance and run. They can play household concierge. Some can almost load a dishwasher. But they’re clumsy right now. (You broke a glass!)

 

They’re also hard to instruct. Think about that hair appointment. The work requires a lot of manual dexterity on the part of the stylist. But as Tim Fernholz reported recently, dexterity is difficult to teach. “Humans don’t have a language for gathering, storing and communicating data about touch, the way we do for language and imagery,” he wrote.

 

“Our fingers’ remarkable sensing ability collects all kinds of information that we can’t easily translate for machines.”

 

A crowded market

 

None of which has stopped China from trying to use the robots to drive economic growth. “Public and private investors spent over $5 billion this year on start-ups making humanoid robots” in China, my colleagues Meaghan Tobin and Xinyun Wu report today — “the same amount spent in the last five years combined.”

 

They have advantages over their competitors in the West. With the backing of the government, they can draw on China’s gigantic manufacturers to fabricate top-quality parts. They can build a lot of robots.

 

But those robots are not about to revolutionize your life, Meaghan and Xinyun write.

 

For one thing, there are too many players — more than 150 Chinese companies are jockeying to lead the market. The Chinese government warned last month of a robot bubble, noting a lot of “highly repetitive products.”

 

And while those products can act somewhat like humans and even perform a few basic tasks, they are not yet anything like skilled human workers. Humanoid robots don’t react well to unpredictable situations.

 

That makes them dangerous. The pioneering roboticist Rodney Brooks told Tim that he wouldn’t get within three feet of a humanoid bot. It’s not just that you can’t reason with a robot (yet). Let’s say one of them loses its balance — that’s a when, not an if, according to Brooks. The powerful machinery that can make that robot useful in the home, office or factory floor could suddenly turn into a scary liability: thrashing mechanical arms or legs, say, pounding into human flesh.” [1]

 

1. The Morning: Mr. Robot. Sifton, Sam.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Dec 17, 2025.