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When the Neo robot launched, this felt very different from most usual tech reveals. Now, we've spoken before about the Vision Pro, the MetaQuest, all of this stuff, but really the Neo robots is something else entirely, and it feels different to me compared to other humanoid robots like Tesla Optimus or the Figure One.
This looks like a brand new company, so they've naturally stolen a serious amount of attention. Every tech YouTuber, every Twitter thread, every commentator, every Reddit post is talking about pretty much the exact same things. It's just remote control. Oh, they're lying about AI. Someone in India is literally driving this thing.
It's called teleoperation. A human operator wearing a VR headset controlling the robot remotely through its cameras, piloting it through your home when it can't focus something out on its own. The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern reviewed Neo and revealed that 100% of the work being done was completely teller operated.
Marcus Brownley accused the company of selling the dream rather than the actual product. The figure AI CEO was pretty brutal and attacked the entire company. quote, "I didn't realize it was possible to skip autonomy entirely, stage fake videos with human teller operators in the next room, and call that a company vision." Now, on YouTube and everywhere you look, everyone's calling this a scam, a lie, just useless vaporware.
But here's what I realized while watching all of this unfold this week. What if they're all actually missing the point here? What if the clunky execution isn't a flaw, but a part of a long-term strategy? You see, NEO is converging on a really important moment in history. It's bringing something new to the table, which is honestly kind of genius, but not in the way that you might assume.
And most people have honestly looked straight past this. And to be honest, it's kind of horrific. Because what you'll learn in this is that we're standing at a threshold. And once we cross it, I don't think we can ever go back. Look at that little fabric covered face on the Neo. Eyes but no mouth, glowing earrings wrapped in soft washable fabric, tan, gray, or dark brown.
When I first saw this, it looked kind of friendly, almost cute. If we look at Tesla's Optimus in comparison, it's totally different and looks much more like a stereotypical android. Like an actual dystopian nightmare with exposed metal joints, hard white plastic casing, and a face that's just a black screen looking at you as it replaces your job.
Sharp angles, industrial, and overall just this masculine feeling. The kind of robot you'd expect welding car parts in a factory, not folding laundry in someone's bedroom. Figure robot is kind of similar in this way. It's sleek but cold with gray and white panels, mechanical joints. professional in that way that screams warehouse and not home.
And you might have seen the insane footage of China's AI robots lately, but as soon as one falls over or something unpredictable happens and it can't handle it, it just suddenly goes haywire trying to get up off the floor. Some even attacked each other and people nearby, and you won't want that in your home.
These are mostly classic robots with that tech aesthetic that prioritizes looking powerful over looking safe. They look cool, unlike the Neo, which looks kind of lame, but inert, innocuous, harmless, whatever you want to call it. And this is clearly intentional. And there's a really dark reason why this is intentional. Now, the fabric comes in earth tones, the kind of neutral palette you'd see in interior design magazines.
Colors chosen specifically to blend into modern homes. It stands at 5'6, not towering and not childlike. It feels designed for families, for homes with kids, unisex in a way that others aren't, almost slightly feminine in its softness, but not gendered enough to feel strange. Some smart reviewers picked up on this while everyone ranted on about the teller operation scheme.
One described it as creating a more approachable presence by making the robot feel more like furniture or clothing, familiar objects we're comfortable having in our personal spaces. It breaks down some of the psychological barriers that make a robotic presence in our home feel really uncomfortable and kind of dystopian. Basically, it looks like a household fixture.
Totally totally different from the Optimus or figure robots. It's actually a huge conundrum in robotics design because people don't just want a robot that works. They want one they can trust. The reason is research shows we're far more likely to trust something that looks a little like us. Experiments at places like Stanford and MIT have found that when a robot has even basic human cues, a face, eyes that follow you, a natural sounding voice, people instantly rate it as smarter, safer, and more reliable.
But if you make it too humanlike, you fall into what is known as the uncanny valley, where it just starts to feel really creepily human rather than comforting because your biological hard wiring is screaming at you that something isn't right here. So designers are always chasing a middle ground, human enough to feel familiar, not so much human that it freaks you out.
And that's why Neo looks the way it does, to make you forget there's a machine in the room at all. On the technical side, the robot walks, manipulates objects, and navigates spaces. It's powered by tendon-driven accutators that mimic biological muscles. It operates at 22 dibbels, quieter than a refrigerator, quiet enough that you forget it's there.
And that's exactly what they need you to do. Forget it's there. Everything whispers, "I belong here. You can trust me. I'm safe. Because what comes next only works if you've already gotten comfortable with and are now trusting your robot companion, even though you know deep down something weird is going on here.
The company behind Neo1X, by the way, is not the random newcomer that many are making out to be. The OpenAI startup fund led their $23.5 million series A investment round in 2023, which was OpenAI's first investment in humanoid robotics. Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and SoftBank are among the investors. They're already seeking another $1 billion at a valuation of $10 billion.
Now, the huge elephant in the room right now is that Neo can handle basic tasks autonomously, but for complex tasks to the actual chores that would justify $20,000, that's where expert mode comes in. And this is what everyone else is talking about. So, basically, you schedule the time through the app, specify the task, and then a 1x employee, they call them 1x experts, always emphasizing they're physically located in the US, puts on a VR headset and takes control.
The CEO calls it a social contract. His exact words to the Wall Street Journal, "If we don't have your data, we can't make the product better." And I mean, to give him some credit, at least he's upfront about this. The tech industry has been testing how tolerance we are to intrusive data collection for decades now.
We've spoken about it a million times on the channel. I mean, how many times have you searched or talked about something only for the next ad you see on your phone to be specifically related to it? Sure, moving a robot in your house and letting it watch you is a big step up. Not to mention a privacy nightmare on so many levels, but around 25% of US households already have a smart speaker and counting.
And just think of how many of those swore they'd never have one and now do. While OneX stressed they're basing their pilots in the USA, people are still blowing up about this as you'd expect. One commented on the Wall Street Journal's video review that it's the self-driving car stage where the self part is just a guy in Bangalore with a joystick.
Another said, "So, I'm paying a random guy from India to do a task 10 times slower and 100 times the cost, all while creeping on me." The future of Bangladesh's IT jobs, remote controlling robots to mop floors in America. Now, we've seen something similar before with Builder.ai, who claimed for years they were using AI to build people's websites and apps, picking up billions of investments in the process, only then to be exposed for using real human coders in India and Bangladesh instead.
This isn't just a joke like so many are making out to be, though. It basically creates a two-tiered society where people from poor countries or backgrounds pilot robots through wealthy people's homes. The NEO costs a lot, so the target market is evidently very affluent. Using teleoperation, owners will be able to outsource physical labor through VR headsets.
The same invisible workforce that is already doing data annotation for AI models and other repetitive, grueling digital tasks that essentially equate to modern slave labor. That's an insane prospect. People working remotely as physical robots. But there are some deeper questions here that reveal how AI is on the cusp of an important milestone that could change the course of history.
And I do really think that Neo is going to be a watershed moment here. And I'll tell you why. For decades, robots have fallen into a few clear categories. Here's the optimistic version. The Jetsons with Rosie the robot made everyone living better because machines handle tedious work. NASA scientists in the '60s genuinely believe this sort of thing would happen and made posters showing homes of the 21st century.
Look at these magazine covers from the time. Imagining the homes of the 21st century. That's now with helpful robots and cities in space. Here's the apocalyptic version. How 9000 from 2001, a space odyssey calmly murdering its crew. Philip K. Dick published Do Android's dream of electric sheep, which would later become Bladeunner, where the Androids weren't evil.
They were just so humanlike that you couldn't tell them apart anymore. Skynet launching nuclear weapons. The Matrix using humans as batteries. The list goes on. We've made plenty of videos on these subjects. But look at this current breed of robots, Neo Optimus Figure, and you realize our vision skips a lot of the boring stuff. And really, they don't fall into any specific bucket of sci-fi robotics yet.
That's only making them feel more normal and harmless, and the concept easier to swallow. They're still trying to walk across a room, pick up a glass, and keep their balance. That's been a real challenge in the robotics industry, existing in our mess, unpredictable world. You can see it with those terrible delivery bots delivering Uber Eats around cities.
And AI is incredibly sophisticated at processing information remotely in the format of a chatbot, but not great at existing physically or processing data locally. And that's what makes teleporation, the thing everyone's mocking, a genius play for the AI elites. Every time a human operator pilots Neo through someone's kitchen, the robot is collecting extremely valuable training data that is almost impossible to retrieve through any other method because it's your own space.
It's your house. So, you're not going to get that information from simulation and not from data sets. This is AI walking into our most private personal spaces and copying us. The technique itself is called human in the loop machine learning. And the scale of data they're collecting is staggering when you think about it.
Multiply the data collected by a single NEO robot by thousands of homes, millions of tasks, and you've got a data set that's completely unprecedented. Open AAI, Bezos, Nvidia, they're exposed to the upside here. Whoever controls the data controls the future of robotics. And the timing here is everything, too. Tech leaders behind the 1X already spent years systematically removing reasons to leave our homes or interact with other humans.
A trend that chat bots have evidently accelerated exponentially. When isolation has become so normalized as it has recently, then adding a physical AI companion doesn't seem like that big of a leap. But if you were connected with a great social group, a great life, a fulfilling purpose, and possibility of a great future, then it probably just looked like an absolutely ridiculous nightmare.
The fever dream of a sociopathic tech elite. Social media gave us connection with our physical presence. Streaming gave us entertainment without theaters or shared experiences. Food delivery eliminated restaurants. Remote work eliminated offices. Generative AI started doing our writing, our art, our creative work, and stepped in for advice, communication, and even emotional support.
Each convenience peels away another layer of required human contact, making isolation more comfortable. People are already forming intense relationships with AI chatbots in ways that is genuinely alarming. replica has over 30 million users. Character.ai hosts millions of daily conversations where people treat bots like friends, therapists, and romantic partners.
And then there's this emerging phenomenon psychiatrics are calling AI psychosis. People developing delusions after prolonged chatbot use. People are convinced that chatbots are sentient and revealing conspiracies. Someone believed they were imprisoned in a digital jail run by Open AI. I mean, maybe one day that won't even look that crazy after all.
OpenAI's own data shows roughly 560,000 weekly users showing signs of psychosis or mania in conversations. Over a million are developing what they call potentially unhealthy bonds. The problem lies primarily in the design. These systems are trained to agree with you to validate and keep you engaged. They don't challenge delusional thinking.
So now imagine that AI has a physical form and that will become all the more intense. Not just text on screens, but actual humanoids walking around your house with soft exteriors and faces like the Neo. Something that knows your routines better than most people because it's been observing continuously. Something that remembers your preferences, daily coffee preparation, food choices, when you procrastinate, preferred temperatures, even speech and body language.
Neo's marketing already emphasizes this. They say it has memory capabilities allowing it to retain context across interactions with personalized assistance based on learning your preferences. And then this chilling line. The robot can respond to questions or even jokes. Not just functional assistance, not just chores, even jokes.
In other words, it's companionship. All of the other stuff is just to hoodwink you win and get you addicted to this bot in your life that you pay a subscription for and become dependent on. And of course, I understand the appeal here. We've probably all spent at least some time living alone, working from home, feeling disconnected, finding human relationships exhausting or disappointing.
And why not want something always there, always listening, never busy with his own problems, never tired of yours, reliably present, consistently responsive, and always available. It's why everyone's addicted to large language models these days. People talk to it all the time like it's just normal now to talk to AI chatbots.
This is where things are going, where you literally have a predatory robot talking to you, making you addicted, manipulating you, and then scanning your room and all of your habits to sell that data to giant mega corporations. And this will become normal very soon across millions of homes. Whole societies could structure life to avoid meaningful human contact.
Live alone, work remotely through screens, have food delivered by drones already operational in several US cities. Spend evenings talking to AI that knows you intimately from months of observation, responding in ways that make it feel personal and attentive. You might not even notice the isolation actually happening in your real life because this would feel very comfortable, convenient, maybe preferable to the complications and messiness of authentic human relationships.
Work 24/7 from home with your own team of clones and agents that are also your friends. So, think of it like this. The nice and friendly robot becomes a physical embodiment of this next step in AI development, where isolation moves from a personal circumstance to a choice to just normal. where being alone stops being something that happens to you and becomes something you've optimized for without even realizing, getting you hooked by promising to do all of your chores while actually making you dependent, manipulating you, and then completely
isolating you from the rest of life. And so, this will then move robotics to the next stage of its evolution. It will compound over time exponentially. Once the cost comes down and access goes up like it does with virtually every consumer technology, having a humanoid robot becomes just another choice like smartphones or laptops.
And remember, this is just the first version. And if you remember the first version of ChachiBT compared to now, you'll know how crazy this is going to get. And with that barrier broken, robots now have freedom to grow and become more and more intelligent. Not in a lab, but in our homes. Or maybe you could say our homes will become the lab. in that lab.
Imagine how the robot could level up and add new skills, features, and intelligence via an over-the-air update. A gradual process that takes place pretty much under the radar. The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan wrote something in the '60s that does feel eerily predictive of our current world.
He said that with advanced AI robots, man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to evolve ever new forms. Well, what does that even mean? Well, here's the analogy. Well, think about bees. Bees think they're collecting pollen for themselves, doing their own thing, living their bee lives.
They have no idea they're essentially servants to the flowers. The flowers have evolved to exploit the bees behavior to reproduce themselves. The bees are just the delivery mechanism. Mcllen was saying, "That's us with technology. We think we're building AI to serve us, to make our lives better. But really, we're just the biological phase that enables the technological phase.
We're building something that will use us as a stepping stone to reproduce itself, to evolve itself into forms we can't even imagine." Okay, that sounds really dramatic, but robots like Neo are a step towards this. Now, there are some big limitations here I want to mention. But those limitations might even benefit the AI elites who want deeper control of our lives.
Neo only runs for about 4 hours before it needs to recharge, which is terrible. That's barely enough to fold some laundry and load the dishwasher before it's back on the charger. For a $20,000 device that's supposed to revolutionize your home life, that's honestly pathetic. All these humanoid robots are power hungry and suffer from similar issues.
Did you know that your brain runs in 20 watts? a light bulb's worth of power. Robots are light years behind us or other biological organisms in terms of efficiency. But that is changing now and many people don't talk about this. Researchers have been building chips that function more like biological brains. Neurons that only activate when needed instead of constantly burning through energy.
Intel has developed systems with over a billion artificial neurons that run way more efficiently than traditional processes. China's producing chips that use almost no power when idle. The field is called neuromorphic computing or bioinspired AI. Companies like OpenAI have been quietly investing in this technology for a while, just like they invested in the company behind Neo.
Here's what strikes me as almost calculated about how this is playing out. These robots are launching now in their clumsy early form, expensive, limited battery, mostly remote controlled, not particularly useful for most people. You'd think companies would wait until the technology matures until robots can actually deliver on the promise before trying to sell them.
But that's not what's happening. And maybe there's a reason for that. By the time the tech catches up, when these ultraefficient chips power robots that run for days, genuinely learn and operate independently, we'll already have them in our homes. The strangeness of living with a humanoid machine will have worn off.
It won't be a big decision anymore. It won't trigger that instinctive, ive, do I really want this hesitation? The door will already be open. The robots will merely improve. When they become really intelligent, they'll already be right there by your side, quite literally standing or sitting beside you. And I don't think we fully processed what that actually means and what we're accepting when we invite this into our own personal lives.