“The AI-Powered Humanoid Robots Coming for Your Job (or at Least Your Housework).”

Perlo, Jared. “The AI-Powered Humanoid Robots Coming for Your Job (or at Least Your Housework).” NBC News, 16 Sept. 2025, www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/humanoid-robots-figure-ai-rcna231720.

This article talked about a start-up called Figure AI based in San Jose, California that gathered funds that exceeded that of major companies like Delta Airlines and Adidas for their human-like robot that completes human tasks, like laundry and grocery unpacking, which even their competitors are excited about, such as Apptronik. Figure AI’s CEO claims that this multi-billion accumulation of funds is a direct result of the desire of having robots take part in the everyday aspects of our future. They supported this claim by referencing many other companies with similar ideas, such as Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Agility Robotics, and more. When this article dove into how there are athletic competitions for robots, I could understand how that may seem cool to people who are interested in technology, but when it started to sell readers on the idea that these robots will do undesirable jobs, I found myself questioning it. 

People need work, right? Even jobs that are undesirable, some are happy to do them because it means earning their living instead of being out of work entirely. However, this article does claim that the start-up only has a desire to make a positive impact on humanity, and proves that by clarifying that the jobs that have labor shortages are those that the robots will serve. I want to believe that, but only a few sentences prior it used the word “replace” to describe the work these robots would do instead of humans, so I remain cautiously optimistic. 

After placing optimism in their readers, the article identifies barriers to their success as technological deficiencies in that the large language models necessary for these robots to operate are not the same as what is currently available for AI sources like ChatGPT. It would be hard for the robot to continue folding our laundry if their battery runs out, or to put away our groceries if they cannot replicate our human ability to manipulate and have dexterity. Even after identifying these barriers and acknowledging that these robotic systems could be hijacked to “perform dangerous activities,” they still claim that there is tremendous promise in these humanoid robots overall. We’ll see…