Artificial Intelligence

Humanoid robots are coming. Eventually?

Published

1 month ago

December 22, 2025

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I have a soft spot for robot fail videos. I watch them on a loop, chuckling to myself, as a kind of therapy. Maybe I’m a sadist, maybe I need to get out more — you can judge me later — but they get me every time. So naturally, I’ve been glued to a clip of Tesla’s Optimus robot falling like a felled tree at the company’s Autonomy Visualized event in Miami that’s been doing the rounds on social media this week.

According to the footage, Elon Musk’s vaunted humanoid robot was handing out water bottles from behind a table before knocking a bunch over, flailing its arms upward, and collapsing backwards like a puppet whose strings had been severed. Watch closely and you’ll see two things: a small plume of water as its arm crushes a bottle mid-fall (it made me laugh), and a motion uncannily similar to someone removing a VR headset.

It wouldn’t be the first time Tesla has faked the autonomous part of its autonomous robot, which Musk says is central to the company’s future. An early demonstration was just a dancer in a skintight bodysuit to show what the Tesla Bot, now Optimus, could be. Later demonstrations were revealed to be (rather obviously, by the sound of it) humans in disguise, operating the robots remotely with something like a VR headset, which we know Tesla uses in development.

Humans have been obsessed with robots for centuries; from ancient tales of stone golems and artificial automatons to modern science fiction, driverless cars, and Roombas, the idea of animating the inanimate with something resembling life has fascinated us. Much of the current hype for humanoids can be traced directly to Musk, so it is reasonable to be more than a little bit skeptical when he and others promise they’ll revolutionize the world. Musk, who has vowed to build a “robot army” of 1 million humanoids, has a deserved reputation as an outlandish and unreliable forecaster, and robotics has ridden more than a few hype waves in its history. In the past, technology has always lagged the enthusiasm of those eager to bring AI into the real world, but today, we’re being told that tech is finally ready to deliver.

So what does ready to deliver actually look like in 2025?

There’s definitely a gold rush of sorts for humanoid robots right now. Every major tech company has them on their roadmap in some capacity, and the likes of Nvidia, Meta, SoftBank, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, and Tesla (duh) are all throwing serious weight — and cash — behind them as the next big frontier in tech. And they’re not alone: A growing constellation of challengers want in on the action, including Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, Figure AI, and 1X.

China wants in, too. Beijing has decided embodied AI — which also includes non-humanoids like drones, quadrupeds, and other autonomous machines — is the key to future economic growth. In its trademark fashion, it has moved to position itself as a world leader in robotics through massive investment, government directives, and state subsidies. Everyone from tech giants Ant Group and Baidu to startups like Unitree and AgiBot is piling in.

If you go by the demos China and everyone else is pumping out, you’d be forgiven for thinking the humanoid robot future has already arrived. This summer, robots competed in dance, combat, track, and field events at the first World Humanoid Robot Games in China. A similar event was held in Greece — the International Humanoid Olympiad — at the birthplace of the Olympic Games. Humanoid fights are more popular than I could have imagined and are apparently taking place absolutely everywhere, from organized contests and underground fight clubs to sparring with CEOs.

Companies are also keen to get bots out of factories and into the home. These kinds of human-centric spaces are why advocates say humanoids are worth pursuing instead of other robot body types that could be easier to produce. Figure said its new Figure 03 robot can take on domestic chores, releasing a video of the bot doing dishes and folding clothes. 1X debuted Neo, which it claims is safe and “the world’s first consumer-ready humanoid robot.” There are also videos of Neo shakily completing basic household tasks. I’m not sure I can afford it, but if you’re interested, 1X is selling units for $20,000, with delivery starting in the US next year.

But actual use cases remain slim, and impressive demos are not the same as working products. For all the progress — and there have been impressive advances — demos are staged, scripted, or even teleoperated. For example, while it is technically true to say that Ant Group’s R1 was cooking for audiences at a trade show this year, it moved at a pace so glacial it would’ve thrilled Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly. Similarly, the idea of having 1X’s Neo sounds much less appealing once you realize you must also commit to having random humans telecommute into your home to control it remotely. And likewise, robot sport events are so fun to watch because the contestants are wobbly, uncertain, and unpredictable, not because they are proficient athletes.

All of this raises the obvious question: If the tech clearly doesn’t match the hype, why are so many people getting so excited about humanoids? Well, for the first time in a long time, it’s not that crazy to think the tech might be starting to catch up.

Historically, it has been exceptionally difficult to get robots to perform even mundane tasks that humans do without thinking, like walking or picking up a glass of water. Hardware — but mostly software — was a limiting factor, and machines were confined to highly structured environments and very narrow tasks. Advances in AI are changing that and turbocharging robot development.

The extraordinary breakthroughs in AI image and text generation from companies like OpenAI and Google are largely down to large language models, or LLMs, that power chatbots. These work by using complex networks to recognize and reproduce patterns found in the massive amounts of data they are trained on. Bigger AI models are trained on practically everything that can be scraped from the internet, and the resulting systems are capable of acting in a generalized way, rather than following rigid, hand-coded rules. To function in the real world, robots need this kind of generalization, and roboticists are trying to use the same approach to give machines the flexible understanding of the physical world they’d need to survive in it.

The challenge here is data. The kind of material used to train LLMs was abundantly available online, but the data needed to train robots is not nearly as easy to come by. Robots need detailed examples of things moving in the real world, which doesn’t really exist at scale. Companies are working hard to change that, and there is a huge effort to create the kind of data needed to train robot models at scale. On the surface, this looks ridiculous — Tesla has workers don cameras and sensors to teach Optimus to behave like a human — but it’s working. It’s also why companies like 1X are deploying less-than-autonomous bots into peoples’ homes, as doing so gives them the opportunity to gather the data needed to make autonomous bots by conducting complex tasks remotely, such as loading the dishwasher or cleaning a tricky object.

Humanoids are becoming more affordable, too — particularly in China — as hardware costs sink and economies of scale kick in. While prices vary wildly — entry-level units can be as little as $1,400 for Chinese model Bumi to around $13,500–$20,000 for models from Unitree or 1X, while industrial models can cost more than houses — they’re approaching prices affordable by some consumers, meaning more bots are being deployed in the real world. This creates a feedback loop, as companies get more data to work with, they build better models and better robots that more people would want, presuming they’re willing to welcome them into their homes.

But even with all this progress, it may still be hype. In November, China’s leading economic planning agency warned a humanoid robot bubble could be brewing, contrasting the sheer number of companies and scale of investment with the absence of viable use cases. The fact is, they’re not really autonomous yet, so, other than hobbyists and researchers, who in their right mind would buy one? If I wanted to get someone in to clean my home, I could hire a cleaner without the hefty upfront cost and save my money until someone produces a robot that can actually do the task I bought it for.

Until companies stop hiding behind glitzy promo videos and teleoperating purportedly autonomous robots, it’s going to be hard to tell where we are. Maybe the robots are finally coming, or maybe I have many more fail videos coming my way. Time will tell, I guess, but I’ll get the popcorn ready.

There is a fascinating data creation and labeling industry emerging from the robotics boom. Around the world, people are getting paid to make the kind of data needed to train robot models. The LA Times’ Nilesh Christopher visited an Indian town where workers are paid to carefully fold towels while wearing cameras.
While companies are racing to get as much real-world data as they can, data doesn’t actually have to be real. Google DeepMind says its AI world model can generate 3D environments that can help train robots.
If, like me, you enjoy robot fails, check out this Russian humanoid faceplanting as it made its big stage debut last month.

The Verge alum James Vincent explores the humanoid hype machine for Harper’s. Apparently kicking robots is something roboticists do, and while he wasn’t allowed, he did poke one with a large stick.
Business Insider reported on the team of Tesla workers striving to teach Optimus how to act more human. The role sounds demanding, repetitive, and a bit ridiculous.
It’s not a humanoid, but The Verge’s Dominic Preston has a great story from inside of one of Ocado’s warehouses showing how robots are being used to pack your groceries.
MIT Technology Review explains why humanoid robots need their own safety rules.
Fortune makes the case for looking beyond the human form.

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Robert Hart

Artificial Intelligence

Ronnie Sheth, CEO, SENEN Group: Why now is the time for enterprise AI to ‘get practical'

Published

4 hours ago

February 3, 2026

miraclelord4k@gmail.com

Before you set sail on your AI journey, always check the state of your data – because if there is one thing likely to sink your ship, it is data quality.

Gartner estimates that poor data quality costs organisations an average of $12.9 million each year in wasted resources and lost opportunities. That’s the bad news. The good news is that organisations are increasingly understanding the importance of their data quality – and less likely to fall into this trap.

That’s the view of Ronnie Sheth, CEO of AI strategy, execution and governance firm SENEN Group. The company focuses on data and AI advisory, operationalisation and literacy, and Sheth notes she has been in the data and AI space ‘ever since [she] was a corporate baby’, so there is plenty of real-world experience behind the viewpoint. There is also plenty of success; Sheth notes that her company has a 99.99% client repeat rate.

“If I were to be very practical, the one thing I’ve noticed is companies jump into adopting AI before they’re ready,” says Sheth. Companies, she notes, will have an executive direction insisting they adopt AI, but without a blueprint or roadmap to accompany it. The result may be impressive user numbers, but with no measurable outcome to back anything up.

Even as recently as 2024, Sheth saw many organisations struggling because their data was ‘nowhere where it needed to be.’ “Not even close,” she adds. Now, the conversation has turned more practical and strategic. Companies are realising this, and coming to SENEN Group initially to get help with their data, rather than wanting to adopt AI immediately.

“When companies like that come to us, the first course of order is really fixing their data,” says Sheth. “The next course of order is getting to their AI model. They are building a strong foundation for any AI initiative that comes after that.

“Once they fix their data, they can build as many AI models as they want, and they can have as many AI solutions as they want, and they will get accurate outputs because now they have a strong foundation,” Sheth adds.

With breadth and depth in expertise, SENEN Group allows organisations to right their course. Sheth notes the example of one customer who came to them wanting a data governance initiative. Ultimately, it was the data strategy which was needed – the why and how, the outcomes of what they were trying to do with their data – before adding in governance and providing a roadmap for an operating model. “They’ve moved from raw data to descriptive analytics, moving into predictive analytics, and now we’re actually setting up an AI strategy for them,” says Sheth.

It is this attitude and requirement for practical initiatives which will be the cornerstone of Sheth’s discussion at AI & Big Data Expo Global in London this week. “Now would be the time to get practical with AI, especially enterprise AI adoption, and not think about ‘look, we’re going to innovate, we’re going to do pilots, we’re going to experiment,’” says Sheth. “Now is not the time to do that. Now is the time to get practical, to get AI to value. This is the year to do that in the enterprise.”

Watch the full video conversation with Ronnie Sheth below:

Artificial Intelligence

Apptio: Why scaling intelligent automation requires financial rigour

Published

5 hours ago

February 3, 2026

miraclelord4k@gmail.com

Greg Holmes, Field CTO for EMEA at Apptio, an IBM company, argues that successfully scaling intelligent automation requires financial rigour.

The “build it and they will come” model of technology adoption often leaves a hole in the budget when applied to automation. Executives frequently find that successful pilot programmes do not translate into sustainable enterprise-wide deployments because initial financial modelling ignored the realities of production scaling.

“When we integrate FinOps capabilities with automation, we’re looking at a change from being very reactive on cost management to being very proactive around value engineering,” says Holmes.

This shifts the assessment criteria for technical leaders. Rather than waiting “months or years to assess whether things are getting value,” engineering teams can track resource consumption – such as cost per transaction or API call – “straight from the beginning.”

The unit economics of scaling intelligent automation

Innovation projects face a high mortality rate. Holmes notes that around 80 percent of new innovation projects fail, often because financial opacity during the pilot phase masks future liabilities.

“If a pilot demonstrates that automating a process saves, say, 100 hours a month, leadership thinks that’s really successful,” says Holmes. “But what it fails to track is that the pilot sometimes is running on over-provisioned infrastructure, so it looks like it performs really well. But you wouldn’t over-provision to that degree during a real production rollout.”

Moving that workload to production changes the calculus. The requirements for compute, storage, and data transfer increase. “API calls can multiply, exceptions and edge cases appear at volume that might have been out of scope for the pilot phase, and then support overheads just grow as well,” he adds.

To prevent this, organisations must track the marginal cost at scale. This involves monitoring unit economics, such as the cost per customer served or cost per transaction. If the cost per customer increases as the customer base grows, the business model is flawed.

Conversely, effective scaling should see these unit costs decrease. Holmes cites a case study from Liberty Mutual where the insurer was able to find around $2.5 million of savings by bringing in consumption metrics and “not just looking at labour hours that they were saving.”

However, financial accountability cannot sit solely with the finance department. Holmes advocates for putting governance “back in the hands of the developers into their development tools and workloads.”

Integration with infrastructure-as-code tools like HashiCorp Terraform and GitHub allows organisations to enforce policies during deployment. Teams can spin up resources programmatically with immediate cost estimates.

“Rather than deploying things and then fixing them up, which gets into the whole whack-a-mole kind of problem,” Holmes explains, companies can verify they are “deploying the right things at the right time.”

When scaling intelligent automation, tension often simmers between the CFO, who focuses on return on investment, and the Head of Automation, who tracks operational metrics like hours saved.

“This translation challenge is precisely what TBM (Technology Business Management) and Apptio are designed to solve,” says Holmes. “It’s having a common language between technology and finance and with the business.”

The TBM taxonomy provides a standardised framework to reconcile these views. It maps technical resources (such as compute, storage, and labour) into IT towers and further up to business capabilities. This structure translates technical inputs into business outputs.

“I don’t necessarily know what goes into all the IT layers underneath it,” Holmes says, describing the business user’s perspective. “But because we’ve got this taxonomy, I can get a detailed bill that tells me about my service consumption and precisely which costs are driving it to be more expensive as I consume more.”

Addressing legacy debt and budgeting for the long-term

Organisations burdened by legacy ERP systems face a binary choice: automation as a patch, or as a bridge to modernisation. Holmes warns that if a company is “just trying to mask inefficient processes and not redesign them,” they are merely “building up more technical debt.”

A total cost of ownership (TCO) approach helps determine the correct strategy. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia utilised a TCO model across 2,000 different applications – of various maturity stages – to assess their full lifecycle costs. This analysis included hidden costs such as infrastructure, labour, and the engineering time required to keep automation running.

“Just because of something’s legacy doesn’t mean you have to retire it,” says Holmes. “Some of those legacy systems are worth maintaining just because the value is so good.”

In other cases, calculating the cost of the automation wrappers required to keep an old system functional reveals a different reality. “Sometimes when you add up the TCO approach, and you’re including all these automation layers around it, you suddenly realise, the real cost of keeping that old system alive is not just the old system, it’s those extra layers,” Holmes argues.

Avoiding sticker shock requires a budgeting strategy that balances variable costs with long-term commitments. While variable costs (OPEX) offer flexibility, they can fluctuate wildly based on demand and engineering efficiency.

Holmes advises that longer-term visibility enables better investment decisions. Committing to specific technologies or platforms over a multi-year horizon allows organisations to negotiate economies of scale and standardise architecture.

“Because you’ve made those longer term commitments and you’ve standardised on different platforms and things like that, it makes it easier to build the right thing out for the long term,” Holmes says.

Combining tight management of variable costs with strategic commitments supports enterprises in scaling intelligent automation without the volatility that often derails transformation.

IBM is a key sponsor of this year’s Intelligent Automation Conference Global in London on 4-5 February 2026. Greg Holmes and other experts will be sharing their insights during the event. Be sure to check out the day one panel session, Scaling Intelligent Automation Successfully: Frameworks, Risks, and Real-World Lessons, to hear more from Holmes and swing by IBM’s booth at stand #362.

See also: Klarna backs Google UCP to power AI agent payments

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Artificial Intelligence

FedEx tests how far AI can go in tracking and returns management

Published

6 hours ago

February 3, 2026

miraclelord4k@gmail.com

FedEx is using AI to change how package tracking and returns work for large enterprise shippers. For companies moving high volumes of goods, tracking no longer ends when a package leaves the warehouse. Customers expect real-time updates, flexible delivery options, and returns that do not turn into support tickets or delays.

That pressure is pushing logistics firms to rethink how tracking and returns operate at scale, especially across complex supply chains.

This is where artificial intelligence is starting to move from pilot projects into daily operations.

FedEx plans to roll out AI-powered tracking and returns tools designed for enterprise shippers, according to a report by PYMNTS. The tools are aimed at automating routine customer service tasks, improving visibility into shipments, and reducing friction when packages need to be rerouted or sent back.

Rather than focusing on consumer-facing chatbots, the effort centres on operational workflows that sit behind the scenes. These are the systems enterprise customers rely on to manage exceptions, returns, and delivery changes without manual intervention.

How FedEx is applying AI to package tracking

Traditional tracking systems tell customers where a package is and when it might arrive. AI-powered tracking takes a step further by utilising historical delivery data, traffic patterns, weather conditions, and network constraints to flag potential delays before they happen.

According to the PYMNTS report, FedEx’s AI tools are designed to help enterprise shippers anticipate issues earlier in the delivery process. Instead of reacting to missed delivery windows, shippers may be able to reroute packages or notify customers ahead of time.

For businesses that ship thousands of parcels per day, that shift matters. Small improvements in prediction accuracy can reduce support calls, lower refund rates, and improve customer trust, particularly in retail, healthcare, and manufacturing supply chains.

This approach also reflects a broader trend in enterprise software, in which AI is being embedded into existing systems rather than introduced as standalone tools. The goal is not to replace logistics teams, but to minimise the number of manual decisions they need to make.

Returns as an operational problem, not a customer issue

Returns are one of the most expensive parts of logistics. For enterprise shippers, particularly those in e-commerce, returns affect warehouse capacity, inventory planning, and transportation costs.

According to PYMNTS, FedEx’s AI-enabled returns tools aim to automate parts of the returns process, including label generation, routing decisions, and status updates. Companies that use AI to determine the most efficient return path may be able to reduce delays and avoid returning things to the wrong facility.

This is less about convenience and more about operational discipline. Returns that sit idle or move through the wrong channel create cost and uncertainty across the supply chain. AI systems trained on past return patterns can help standardise decisions that were previously handled case by case.

For enterprise customers, this type of automation supports scale. As return volumes fluctuate, especially during peak seasons, systems that adjust automatically reduce the need for temporary staffing or manual overrides.

What FedEx’s AI tracking approach says about enterprise adoption

What stands out in FedEx’s approach is how narrowly focused the AI use case is. There are no broad claims about transformation or reinvention. The emphasis is on reducing friction in processes that already exist.

This mirrors how other large organisations are adopting AI internally. In a separate context, Microsoft described a similar pattern in its article. The company outlined how AI tools were rolled out gradually, with clear limits, governance rules, and feedback loops.

While Microsoft’s case focused on knowledge work and FedEx’s on logistics operations, the underlying lesson is the same. AI adoption tends to work best when applied to specific activities with measurable results rather than broad promises of efficiency.

For logistics firms, those advantages include fewer delivery exceptions, lower return handling costs, and better coordination between shipping partners and enterprise clients.

What this signals for enterprise customers

For end-user companies, FedEx’s move signals that logistics providers are investing in AI as a way to support more complex shipping demands. As supply chains become more distributed, visibility and predictability become harder to maintain without automation.

AI-driven tracking and returns could also change how businesses measure logistics performance. Companies may focus less on delivery speed and more on how quickly issues are recognised and resolved.

That shift could influence procurement decisions, contract structures, and service-level agreements. Enterprise customers may start asking not just where a shipment is, but how well a provider anticipates problems.

FedEx’s plans reflect a quieter phase of enterprise AI adoption. The focus is less on experimentation and more on integration. These systems are not designed to draw attention but to reduce noise in operations that customers only notice when something goes wrong.

(Photo by Liam Kevan)

See also: PepsiCo is using AI to rethink how factories are designed and updated

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