I can't believe I'm saying this but I think humanoid robots might be a big deal

A take that will age extremely well, or extremely badly

POD! We have an awesome episode of The Abundance Agenda this week where Martin and I defend the honour of new build houses – and argue that they are better than ‘second-hand homes’. Then we speak to the CEO of house-builder Barratt Redrow to learn what it’s actually like trying to build new homes in a country that is so hostile to building stuff. Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or Substack.

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If you want to see a real-life example of the expectation-vs-reality meme, then I strongly recommend watching this video of the 1X Neo, which the company claims is the world’s first humanoid domestic robot:

As the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern demonstrates, the $20,000 robot is designed to be a mechanical housekeeper who can take care of household tasks like loading the dishwasher, folding clothes or bringing you drinks. On the strength of what we can see in the video, it isn’t quite there yet, to say the least.

But this isn’t the only sign that the technology is lacking, as partway through the video, Stern reveals a rather awkward twist, that the robot is not, well, a robot.

Though the company behind it hopes that one day the Neo will have the on-board intelligence to do your bidding, when it launches it will be more of a Mechanical Turk: every task will actually be performed by a human, controlling the robot from a remote location, like a puppet.

I’m guessing they got the idea for the design from Power Rangers.

This means that the way it will work in reality is that when you want the robot to do the dishes, you first need to book an appointment in an app, and at the designated time, it will come to life and your remote maid will get to work using a virtual reality headset.

Leaving aside the fact that this seems like a pretty glaring privacy nightmare as it means other humans will be virtually poking around your home, and the techno-dystopian aspect of employing people in who-knows-where locations to clean your home remotely, this is obviously not a great reveal for the company.¹

So given all of this, I think you could be forgiven for thinking that this amazing robotic technology is, well, a bit shit. The required artificial intelligence is clearly not there yet.

And even when piloted by a human, it is very striking just how slow the robot is. When it bends down to load the dishwasher, you start to wonder if it is having a seizure.

However, here’s where I’m going to be a contrarian.

Despite the evidence in front of my eyes in the Stern video, I’m not going to sneer. In fact, I think the video actually validates a number of reasons we should be optimistic about the prospects of humanoid robots as a technology.

And as crazy as it might sound now, I’m pretty convinced that in the medium-term future, they could be pretty commonplace.

So sit back, put your feet up and wait for a robot to take care of your chores – below the paywall I’m going to explain why I’ve landed on this mad-sounding conclusion.