The last AI rant of the year

the 13th month is around the corner. If you don't know, I believe in a 13-month year, and that last 4-week period is called Extrary. If you curious, please check out the letters from last year (week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4).

Today I would like to rant. Let me, for the last time this year. Almost 2 milion people watched the WSJ's video about the first humanoid home robot, and as somebody who's been working for startups for most of my life, it made me cringe.

The robot in question, Noe X1, is supposed to be the ultimate house maid that costs $20.000. But you know, since it's a startup, and startup culture internalised "fake it till you make it", it's still pretty much useless. Pardon, useless on its own. Because of course, this incredible piece of junk powered by AI must be controlled remotely by, you guessed it, a human. This is so wrong, my friend, that I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

Let me just state the obvious. The idea of putting a 24/7 surveillance robot into my home sounds like a total security nightmare. The safety measures mentioned in a video seem laughable. Every X1 pilot should be supervised at all times but how anybody could pay attention to, i guess, ten to twenty machines? The other potential risk - that a machine cannot harm its owners (?) - isn't addressed enough either, since, as far as I remember, its buyer cannot really turn it off (sic!). There are other possibilities for exploitation, for example, gathering data about the house, and daily schedules of its inhabitants, and then selling it to burglars. Easy peasy.

What disappoints me the most about it though is the idea that robots should mimic human behaviour. I would definitely dislike having another creature/being/reacting entity that I need to be polite to. I like to have an impersonal relationship with my fridge, dish washer, washing machine or vacuum cleaner. I don't tell the washing machine: hey, today's load is very dirty, please take care of it. It just does its job without any words. And why is the industry now focused so much on creating robots with whom one develops a para-social or para-human relationship? I truly doesn't get the appeal. Wikipedia says that "in September 2025, it was reported that 1X Technologies was seeking to raise $1 billion in new funding to support the development and deployment of its humanoid robots for home environments". Why would anybody invest so much money into creating a maid, a perfect servant? The more I think about it the creepier it looks, like in a bad sci-fi movie.

Gosh, imagine $1 billion for a humanoid. And what we really need is a sink integrated with a dishwasher. You put all the mugs, plates, cutlery etc. into the sink that organises them and puts into a dishwasher. I don't think this would require much of the AI and it can be a problem in this hype-driven economy.

Thanks for reading!

Wiktoria