this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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I am personally rather skeptical about the commercial viability of humanoid robots in 2026, but I suppose that we shall see.
They are just the prototypes to the eventual Slaughterbots that will be deployed into the streets to kill us, and bring us under control.
I'm sure that's the vision but I'm not entirely sure that Elon Musk is the man to bring it about.
He is shifting production to a robot he can't even show a working prototype for. The US taxpayer will be buying some expensive Roombas in 2026....
I just don't understand who the market is supposed to be for humanoid robots. Manufacturing? They've already built bespoke task-centric robots. Consumers and businesses? They can already hire a real person without spending money upfront to "purchase" said person. I just don't see the use case. It feels like another metaverse or smart glasses. Just another desperate grab at investor money and trying to claim the next "big thing".
I mean, human environments are intrinsically made for humanoids to navigate. Like, okay, we put stairs places, things like that. So in theory, yeah, a humanoid form makes sense if you want to stick robots in a human environment.
But in practice, I think that there are all kinds of problems to be solved with humans and robots interacting in the same space and getting robots to do human things. Even just basic safety stuff, much less being able to reasonably do general interactions in a human environment. Tesla spent a long time on FSD for its vehicles, and that's a much-more-limited-scope problem.
Like, humanoid robots have been a thing in sci-fi for a long time, but I'm not sold that they're a great near-term solution.
If you ever look at those Boston Dynamics demos, you'll note that they do them in a (rather-scuffed-up) lab with safety glass and barriers and all that.
I'm not saying that it's not possible to make a viable humanoid robot at some point. But I don't think that the kind of thing that Musk has claimed it'll be useful for:
...a sort of Rosie The Robot from The Jetsons, is likely going to be at all reasonable for quite some time.
I guess the point I was trying to make in my original post is - say we invent human robots tomorrow - what's better about them than actual humans, which we already have an unlimited supply of? It just seems like a god complex thing to me, not really solving any major problems for humanity.
How many times has Musk promised technology actually appeared?
He killed his EV company just as EV sales were taking off worldwide.
You should check out this news story. It gives a lot more detail about their Atlas robot.
The plan is government contracts and kickbacks to Trump.
The military and DHS will buy them up like hot cakes i bet. Coming soon to a street corner near you. My question is will they be armed with 5.56 or 7.62?
Almost literally this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YyvHqYu_KXI
I smell Iron Man 2 plot.
But why has it become reality?
Almost literally this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YyvHqYu_KXI
You should see just how far Boston Dynamics has progressed. They’ve been working on it for literally decades, and it shows. They may have humanoid AI robots working in automotive assembly lines within a year or two:
If it's taken Boston Dynamics decades it's going to take Elon Musk centuries.
Move fast, and kill all humans.
Bullshit. Cute dance videos are not actual productivity, and the most recent video shows a B-D -Robot barely taking a large part of a large self and dropping it into a rack. Stuff one armed robots already do.
Watch the videos: they always distract with cute waves and dancing but no way will these toys replace skilled labor.
Doubt. There was FT article about robots efficiency in factories with title.
https://archive.ph/Gzi41
Robots in this and next deade will be big flop. It will be like with VR from 80s and 90s
It won't matter if they're cheaper.
People are very expensive.