What am I even on this planet for, really? To play videogames? To partake in an unhealthy diet? To make awkward sexual passes at the consenting partner of my choice? All of the above.
I might as well dig my own grave and climb into it because there’s a robot on the brink of accomplishing all of those important tasks in my place. As a human, I’m officially obsolete because the NEO Home Robot can use an Xbox controller, open a bag of Funyuns, and slowly, awkwardly remove someone’s clothing. Well, I had a good run. Goodbye, everyone.
As you can see in the video, NEO, created by Palo Alto company 1X Technologies, has some pretty finely articulated hands that appear to be capable of (slowly) performing household chores, including:
- Swirling invisible wine in a glass
- Changing a lightbulb before the bulb is inexplicably smashed with a hammer
- Daintily picking up a screw
- Separating grapes
- Lifting a 20 pound weight for less than a second before a suspiciously quick edit
- Slowly, creepily, unzipping someone’s hoodie
- Connecting non-Lego brand Legos
- Using an Xbox controller, sort of
- Opening a bag of Funyuns and removing one Funyun while (inexplicably, again) a human attacks it with a hammer
- Creepily plugging itself in so it can continue being creepy
A lot to unpack there. First, I can absolutely see the potential of a robot that can perform basic household chores, pick things up, and yes, even remove articles of clothing: for an elderly person or someone with a disability (who is also fabulously wealthy because these robots cost $20,000 or a require a $500 monthly subscription fee), a helper bot could be life-changing.
But this little robot is just… weird. Red flag number one: anyone, human or otherwise, that wears a white sweater with white gloves as it putters around the house is a serial killer. That’s just science. NEO’s face, which can be glimpsed briefly staring down at the lightbulb it just switched on, is also startling: pitch black eyes on an otherwise featureless head. Can’t you imagine it bludgeoning you with that 20 pound weight while it silently tilts its head to one side, its button eyes wide and unblinking, as if attempting to comprehend death?
The video itself is weird. Why is NEO attacked with a hammer, twice? Wouldn’t zipping up the hoodie be a far less creepy demonstration of its skills than slowly unzipping it? And I can’t quite see the point of teaching NEO to use the Xbox controller. Are we so advanced we’re outsourcing not just our chores but our hobbies to robots?
There is one bit of good news that may stave off my obsolescence for a year or so: I did a bit of digging into NEO and it appears that at the moment, most of its actions are accomplished not autonomously but via a human pilot operating it remotely with VR gear, as seen in this Wall Street Journal video.
Knowing there’s a person slowly performing all those tasks behind the scenes sort of doubles the creepiness of the already creepy robot. Not only is NEO staring at you with its dead black eyes, there are living eyes behind those eyes—probably some 19-year-old intern in Palo Alto—peering at you as you issue commands like “distribute Funyuns” and “slowly undress me.”
So, the $20,000 robot that will replace me requires a whole other person to run the robot replacing me. Makes more sense to just keep me around, doesn’t it? I’m much cheaper: the only subscription I require is a month of HBO a couple times a year.
