The Problem with this Humanoid Robot

Okay, we have to have a conversation

about this. I feel like it's been a

minute since I've done just like an old

school straight to camera rant video,

but this has been all over my timeline

lately, so I feel like I feel like I

have to. So, meet Neo. Potentially the

most futuristic product we've ever seen.

This thing is a full-fledged humanoid

robot. 5 foot 6, 66 lb, 4 hour battery

life, self-charging, and it lives in

your house. It's finally here. Get your

mind out of the gutter. It's for doing

chores. It's a housekeeper. It has the

same dexterity as a human because it's

shaped just like a human. Walks around

on two legs. Has 10 fingers. It can fold

laundry and put it away for you. Or it

can do the dishes for you from start to

finish and then put everything away. It

can go around and water the plants

outside or inside on a perfect schedule

and it never forgets a single plant. And

then it'll go around and vacuum and tidy

up the house if anything gets left out.

It always knows where everything is. It

can find the TV remote and it'll

basically actively do all the chores

that you know you have to do, but you

don't actually want to do. And when it's

done, it goes back to its little docking

spot and charges itself. Imagine going

out for the day of work and coming back

a few hours later and everything's done.

All the chores are finished every single

time, every day. You never have to do

chores again. That's amazing. Or maybe,

let's say, you have mobility issues.

This thing can sort of act as a personal

assistant in a lot of ways. These are

things that represent massive value for

a lot of people. And it's available to

order now. This this is available to

order. This feels like it could be the

best tech announcement of all time in

2025. Except

this isn't real. And I mean that in the

most literal way possible. This is not

real. First of all, it's a pre-order.

So, you can go to this website right now

and you can pick between three colors

and then it's either $500 bucks a month

subscription for a standard delivery or

you can pay a flat $20,000 to own it

outright and get priority delivery. Just

drop a $200 fully refundable deposit to

get in line today. And deliveries in the

US start sometime next year. And that's

just allegedly. We don't know when it's

actually going to ship. Now, to be

clear, it's not actually the price that

I have a big problem with. Like, I know

these numbers seem eye popping on paper,

but this is a first generation bleeding

edge humanoid robot assistant. Like, I

never thought that this would be cheap.

And also, there isn't really competition

yet. So, you got to imagine the target

audience is going to be people whose

time is worth more than the money

they're spending on it. Like this is for

people who the idea of saving a few

hours on chores every week so that they

can use that time to make more money

actually makes logical sense. Like

people really think like that. It's for

early adopters. It's it's for people who

want to spend however much they think

it's worth on this brand new novel

thing. That's fine. But my issue with

this product is the gap between what

it's actually capable of today and what

they're promising as they take your

money today. Like I think when people

watch a video like this, they expect

that this robot has some sort of

built-in artificial intelligence that

allows it to recognize objects and

navigate around on its own and learn

your house and be productive for those

hours while you're gone. And that I

think would be a reasonable thing to get

out of watching that video because

that's what it's designed to show.

That's what you're supposed to feel.

That's the dream. But that's not

actually what's happening. So Joanna

Stern, the legend, she did a video with

this Neo robot also this week where the

company showed her all the things that

it could do. And turns out 100% of the

things that they showed her were

remotely controlled by a human in

another room wearing a VR headset with

controllers. That's not exaggerating.

100% of the stuff they showed her. The

carrying things around, the loading up

the dishwasher. I mean, look at this

thing.

[Music]

Yeah. All of this is tea operated. And

this was a demo set up by this 1x

company. So, this is like best case

scenario stuff. And I see a lot of

people defending this robot online like,

"Oh, you know, no, there's probably

other things that it can do

autonomously. They just didn't show her

yet." Really?

You You don't think they would show her

the best stuff that this could do

autonomously to keep selling the dream?

If you watch that keynote video back, to

their credit, you'll notice that they

actually are very careful to label

exactly when the robot is doing

something autonomously and not

teaoperated. And in that whole nearly

10-minute video, there's exactly two

scenes that have this label. There's the

get the door command.

>> Get the door, please.

>> Where the robot walks over to the door

because someone's coming up. It grabs

the handle, waits for the guest, and

then sort of pulls the door open and

fumbles backwards a little bit, kind of

like a toddler to let them inside. And

then there's the put away the dishes

command where the robot totles over to

the person, recognizes the harmless not

glass empty cup in its hand, grabs it,

and then walks away with it. Cool. No,

seriously, that's actually pretty

impressive. Even if I could already

today unlock the door with my Google

Home and a smart lock, which is my

voice, there is something at least a

little bit futuristic about a humanoid

robot going to do that. That's part of

the dream. It's doing it autonomously.

But then that also means that everything

else happening in this video and

everything else we've ever seen this Neo

robot do, we can safely assume is remote

controlled. So the gap between what this

product can actually do today and what

it can maybe hopefully do someday in the

ideal future are it is massive. They are

massively far apart. And so that that's

really my main issue. There seems to be

a bit of a lost art in waiting for a

tech product to be actually finished

before announcing and unveiling it.

Like, do you remember when tech

companies would unveil a brand new tech

product that they've been working on and

then do a demo and then the next slide

was like, "This thing is going on sale

tomorrow or next week or something like

that." And that hype would carry right

into the buying cycle. You remember

that? That was sick. But now in this age

of all these AI products, it's like

there's this thing where you end up

selling the dream before you sell the

actual product. And that is dangerous.

Like the promise of AI is so huge and so

massive and magnificent and awesome, but

is also so clearly not done yet that you

end up with stuff like the humane pin or

even the rabbit R1 for example or heck

even Apple intelligence where you have

these big promises but the capabilities

are still over here while the promise is

all the way over here. And I'm trying to

figure out why they do that. And I think

really there's two main reasons. And

believe it or not, I think Tesla

self-driving is a really perfect

parallel example for a lot of this

stuff. See, basically, in order for this

robot to be everything people want it to

be, they need to develop a super smart

AI system that looks through the robot's

sensors and is able to learn its

environment and recognize everything

it's looking at and teach itself to

navigate that environment and perform

tasks. It has to learn what a laundry

room is and what the laundry looks like

and how to fold each type of clothing.

And it needs to learn what cups and

forks and glasses are and how to pick

them up. And it has to be adaptable to

all these different sizes and shapes and

materials and things of all these

household objects so that when the user

asks for it to do something just like,

"Hey, Neo, vacuum the living room when

I'm gone or something like that." Then

Neo can go, "Okay, I know where the

living room is. I know where the vacuum

is. I know how to use the vacuum, where

the handle's at, like how much battery

life I have, how much I need to vacuum

the whole living room. I know not to

knock over lamps or certain objects in

there. And even the laundry folding

thing, like just that requires a ton of

training data or at least some way to

understand all these different shapes of

shirts and jackets and hoods and vests

and all sorts of things and hooks and

and hangers and what gets folded, what

gets dry cleananed, all these different

things. And the list just goes on and

on. And like what if one of the tasks is

going and and getting the right

medication for an elderly person,

bringing it to them that it it has to

get that right. Like it needs to

identify the correct medication at the

right time and the right intervals and

bringing it to them. Like that that is

one of a ton of household objects that

it has to specifically get really good

at. Now, in the self-driving car world,

no matter what you think of them,

Tesla's definitely a leader here, and

they've had a pretty clever approach to

trying to work on this problem because

their problem is their robots on wheels

need to learn all these possible

variations and ways to navigate

situations that could happen on the road

and how to get around them. Traffic

cones, construction zones, weird lane

markings, etc., etc. So with their

millions of cars already on the road,

they have slowly, very slowly let people

turn on this beta self-driving feature

in small stages in their cars while

instructing people to keep their hands

on their wheel, of course, so that they

can slowly start to gather information

from people willing to beta test. And so

those cars will encounter and navigate

all sorts of situations for the first

time and then the second time and then

the fifth time and then the hundth time.

And all this data can go back into the

system to help all these cars learn and

get better. And now at this point, this

is like their primary advantage is they

have millions and millions of miles of

training data from people essentially

beta testing for Tesla. It's a robotics

challenge. It's an AI challenge, but

yeah, they're essentially using early

adopters to beta test to make the

systems better for the eventual masses.

And now this this home AI robot

challenge is essentially the same thing,

but in people's homes, which is

potentially way more variables like cars

have to stick to what's on the road and

and mostly are operating in a 2D plane.

Well, there's obviously different story.

People's houses are crazy different

shapes and there's all sorts of objects

and different shapes and types of them

and a million different variables just

with household objects. And maybe you

could argue that the stakes of

self-driving cars are a little higher

because of all the safety risks and, you

know, if it messes up, someone could

die.

Maybe that doesn't happen as often with

the home AI robot, but then again, if it

gets someone's medication wrong, you

know, it's still pretty important. So, I

think the point here is you don't get to

make this awesome, perfect home robot

without all of this information. And so,

they need the training data. And so,

they go right back to early adopters.

So, people who press that order now

button first and who actually, I guess,

get one of these when they start to ship

them will get a robot that can probably

do a few simple things autonomously,

like opening doors. But there will be

many things it can't do. And for that,

if you scroll down on their website, you

can see there's expert mode, which is

when you have something the robot can't

yet do, and you schedule one of their

teleaoperating employees to look through

the sensors into your home and do the

task so that the robot can learn from

it. And this is something that they've

direct pretty directly said that they

expect early adopters to be totally cool

with. Like, go watch Joanna's video.

I'll link it below the like button. He

basically grills the CEO about all this

stuff and he's kind of just like, yeah,

you know, if you want to be on the

bleeding edge of this, like, you know,

we'll probably blur faces and maybe let

you geo fence certain areas of your

house, but yeah, that'll be one of the

things that they allow you to do. So,

look, there are certain industries where

pre-ordering something that's not

finished yet is actually normal

behavior. Like, this happens all the

time with smartphones now. This happens

in video games. It even happens a bit

with cars these days, although sometimes

that can even go too far. But now with

all these AI products coming out now,

it's resulted so many more times in this

strategy. They feel like they have to

announce the product way before it's

done and they they end up putting out

this thing that is just nowhere near the

dream. And that's how you get, you know,

we talked about the humane pin. Doesn't

that sound familiar? like getting

announced with such a high potential

ceiling and promising that this could

maybe be a post smartphone world type of

gadget, but it was just absolutely not

good when it came out and not enough

people were willing to beta test

something with that miserable of an

experience. And then the Rabbit R1, like

I said, that's another one. you know,

they are surviving and they're

improving, but absolutely with those

early adopters. But a $20,000

5 foot6 humanoid that wanders around

your house and does chores, like are

there really that many people you think

that are willing to spend that amount of

money and know that they're going to

have to potentially give up some pretty

serious privacy and are basically going

to be a beta tester for some unknown

number of years to hopefully maybe

someday achieve that dream?

Some of those people are out there, but

is there enough of those people? You

know, I don't know. I I clearly don't

know, and I think a lot of other people

don't know. There are obviously a lot of

potential downsides to this robot. You

know, it's too small and weak to carry

anything super heavy. It's also too slow

and a bit too clumsy, it looks like, to

do anything really serious, and it

requires inviting a ton of remote

viewable cameras and microphones into

your house. And it could also fall over

and have a hard time getting up. And

also, just like the self-driving car,

there are a number of situations where

the robot getting enough things wrong

could be dangerous. Like even like just

the medication stuff that I talked about

earlier, or even it just clumsily

dropping something made of glass or any

other various potentially dangerous

household situations. And also, I'm not

even sure it has to be human- shaped,

but that's another argument for another

video. But the upside clearly is the

dream. like Rosie the robot from the

Jetsons type of dream. A personal

assistant that seamlessly goes around

your house and quietly does all the

stuff that you don't want to do and does

it better and faster as time goes on and

does it in quiet hours of the night. The

point is this is the new AI promise

problem that we have. It's it's not just

this product and this company. This is,

you know, the most visible one on all

our timelines right now. But it's like

all these AI products are promising the

world way before they have a product

that's ready to actually show anyone and

take money for it. And and

theoretically, this is what we want AI

to do, right? It's not just like AI

generated videos and slop and random

copyright infringement. Like we want it

to be doing actually useful, productive

stuff. That's not the issue. It's just

the gap. The gap that's the issue. And

closing that gap is so so hard. And and

you know this is one of the obvious

examples like the people that would

benefit most from the ideal version of

this robot like the elderly or people

with disabilities are the least likely

to become early adopters. So it's tough.

I can actually applaud them for showing

everything that they did to Joanna in

that video. Uh, fun fact, they actually

reached out to me 10 months ago in

January from a random Gmail address

offering to do a sponsored video. I

didn't respond. I didn't think it was

anywhere close to real or worth doing a

video or talking about, but we'll see

how this ages. Like, we might look back

at this in 12 months and every everyone

everywhere is shipping great AI products

and humanoid robots and it's all a dream

and I look like an idiot. In which case,

great, we made it through that gap

somehow. Uh, but history seems to be

suggesting that I'll probably be right

about this one, at least for now. But

hey, subscribe to see me in my words if

I'm wrong. Thanks for watching. Catch

you in the next one. Peace.