Reminds me of the scene from Robocop 2 when they are introducing new robocop models and one literally rips his helmet off and his skull just screams. As a kid I found it both funny and scary at the same time.

This is something that can happen with an autonomous robot if it was trained via imitation learning, which is one of the common ways of doing things when using transformers, and transformers are in vogue right now.

But knowing how tech demonstrations usually work, it's much more likely that this is actually just a robot being remote controlled by another human.

Yeah, Elon's tech demos are usually remote controlled

This is why I know Elon won't get that ridiculous bonus. He has to sell a million of these robots.

What is even the point of these robots? Like, will he provide the operators as well? Do I have to employ someone to work my robot? Am I supposed to use a robot as a proxy? I don't get what's being sold.
- What's being sold is the illusion that the robots are completely autonomous based on AI or something.
  Buy it now, get the full AI self-walking update in ~~two~~ ~~three~~ ~~seven~~ ~~fifteen~~ some years.
  It worked for Tesla cars, so why should the same strategy not work on the same idiots with robots?
- The robots are supposed to be autonomous, not driven by an operator, but no one can make robots except Boston Dynamics and even they have struggled.
- Even if they aren't autonomous you could argue that the dexterity of these bots could be very useful for a human operator to work in a hazardous environment where the human being present directly is harmful.
  Now selling them as fully autonomous while pulling off an Amazon checkout is total bullshit.
- There's a singular perfectly awesome use case for a robot you can drive as your proxy. Here it is:
  Of course, the chances on Elmo being able to deliver anything even approaching this minimum level of usefulness are well into the negatives.
Oh god, you're right. One million robots in ten years. That's impossible and hilarious.
On the other hand it's good for the economy. They will have to employ one million people working full time to control them. Musk is such a good socialist.
- Could they work for people with disabilites? That's the only potential I could see for something like this but if you have to physically walk around to operate the robot they won't even work for that.

Why it look like whoever was controlling it just took their headset off? User takes viser off robot falls from lack of user controls? Tell me this was not actually just another mechanical turk.

It was AI -- Actually Indians
- Anonymous Indians since we've never met them
- i read that omg seems its always just a room full of exploited humans.
- Well at least it's not Turk?

The most recent Defunctland video made me believe we might actually see full autonomous robots performing pretty rudimentary tasks while looking humanoid in the relatively near future. This uh... Isn't that.

The Indian operator just finished his shift

He meant AI as in Affordable Indians
https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2025/the-company-whose--ai--was-actually-700-humans-in-india.html
I was gonna post a joke but nothing will top this lol

My optimist: surely Musk will not be able to get away with being caught in this obvious lie.

My realist: he's gonna get away with it again.

The optimistic take is that no one is that stupid.
The realistic take is that musk fanboys will claim that the robot is so advanced, that it thinks it's alive and mimics someone taking his headset off, because it has seen it.
- Sadly it's not even limited to fanboys, just the completely oblivious. I was kinda shocked recently to explain to a work friend how idiotic musk is with receipts. He was perplexed, "... But he's that smart tech billionaire, right?" Just taking the world at face value.
- I'm sure we'll see, "the AI was trained on human operator recordings - which unfortunately included headset removal actions, Tesla is now working to filter that from the model".
- If we wanted to to do that we’d say it wasn’t taking headphones off, it was throwing up its arms in panic that it was having a stroke. See the immediate collapse
Remember those Tesla solar roof tiles? Fake. Made by a prop company in LA.
Tesla solar still exists, but they just install typical panels, because PUTTING SOLAR TILES IN THE SHADY ROOF SIDE WAS STUPID.
- I’ve seen a local installation of the tiles. I asked the contractor all about them as they went in. They are real.
- Are you sure? I remember seeing other legitimate roofing companies selling solar roof tiles too. I think I even remember watching an installation video. They weren't rigid tiles, they were flexible and nailed down similarly to shingles.
- While I really don’t want to defend that flop, they didn’t. Their goal was to create identical tiles so the roof looked consistent but only some would be the more expensive solar tiles

They should have brought Putin's blanket of shame

What is this from?
- It's a scene from 1990's RoboCop 2.
What I thought of immediately.
- I came here expecting to post it myself, delighted to not have to put in the effort.
Kind of what I hoped happened, without the corpse. Could have been cool to see it rip its head off.

Elon Musk once again proving that he's more of a Justin Hammer than a Tony Stark (who was already a problematic figure, but at least had talent and SOME sense of right and wrong)

Elon Musk was in Iron Man 2 because he was the closest thing to Tony Stark. And then Lex Luthor looked and sounded like Elon thinks he does, because he's the closest thing to Lex Luthor.
Problematic? He was a Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist and the Hero that saved the world!

2025 version of the mechanical turk

Indeed, a case for Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a service that is shamelessly and deliberately named after its historical model. The principle has not changed after all this time: poorly paid people do the work to make it look as if machines could perform the task - as if it were an unprecedented technological breakthrough, as if it were some kind of magic.
It is a very popular thing among all the companies that claim that "artificial intelligence" was the future.
Edit: However, this does not appear to be a demonstration of autonomous technology.
Edit edit: Apparently, this was actually intended as a demonstration of autonomous technology - any source other than Reddit would be more credible.
- They've already demonstrated time and again that these robots only exist so the rich can have slaves without actually having to see or interact with the slaves. They even had their robot strength nerfed so that there could be no uprising.
- I thought Mturk was primarily used for labeling data for ML models, i.e., "here's data. Look at it and give it a label according to our specifications". Do they have a component of Mturk for piloting devices?
Mecha Türk intensifies

Remember cyberguy? I like the energy.

With his delicate all these robots move it's nice to see one throwing some weight around. And it's holding up really well, you'd assume a connection would come loose after the first swing.
Trial and ERROR!!! amirite

Everything about Elon Musk is a scam.

Upside: Service workers can now work from home

If I send in my robot does that mean I don't need to commute?
Reality: Prisoners can and will be required to work as service workers from their prison cells.
- I, for one, can't wait for the inevitable robot murder committed vicariously via a murderer controlling a robot from their cell.
- It's called capitalist innovation, sweaty
- With 24h surveillance prisons are not needed, just the mandatory work.
- ah god damnit that's fucking bleak and i know you're right...
- Well shit….

I was so confused, I thought it had accidentally done a Nazi salute while removing the headset and then it shut down as some sort of rule.

I had no idea that instead of a person standing there doing whatever a person controls it remotely. What a great idea for nuclear waste clean up, fucking terrible for handing out water.

You can know that isn't the case because a Nazi salute would be encouraged by Musk, not shut it down.

I want to see footage of the backroom where the controllers are located so badly. Imagine how silly it must look, just a room full of people wearing VR headsets while trying to make their movements look as robotic as possible.

Also notice how it crushes the water bottle? Not safe to be around.

First thing I noticed. This is like standing next to a manufacturing robot, except without the black and yellow safety square that tells you how far its reach is.

Droptimus.

Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.

wow its been a minute since ive seen this
- Not my fault there's constant "shit site" reference/sources.

"What is my purpose?"
\ "You hand out the water"
\ "Are you kidding me, billions of dollars invested. Countless hours of research. The rare materials inside my chassis cost more than you'll see in your lifetime. You know what -- actually fuck this."
\ Hitlerbot has left the chat

The robot apocalypse will be teleoperated from a scam compound in Myanmar.
- Oooh, I kind of love that. Like there's a classic robot uprising, but the whole robot rights and robot sentience thing is just a smoke screen to weaken the opposition's resolve. It's all just a billionaire behind the curtain.
handing out water in open containers is actually a great challenge because it requires sensitivity (to apply just the right amount of grip pressure)
so it's a great way to demonstrate sensitivity of the machine.

Surrogates coming true I see.

I remember this movie…. Bruce Willis right?
- 100% correct
Love this movie actually
- It gets a ton of hate, but it's good. I always thought it was a pretty accurate view of the future. Here we are lol.

Just imagine it was your hand instead of that tiny water bottle.

you misspelled penis. We all know the end game for these robots.
- The polite word is "cylinder"

Thanks I needed that

Maybe it was trying to end its tortured existence like those prototype replacement models in Robocop II...

It can't even keep itself upright without teleoperation?

It could, if it was told to. It's likely there is an idle or autonomous mode the operater was supposed to set it to before taking off the headset. Instead it was left in "replicate every action the operator streams to you mode" until the stream abruptly cut off while the robot wasn't in a balance point. It's possible the robot normally has an amount of delay/wait time when the signal is lost before reverting to some failsafe state. But since the signal was cutoff while it was flailing it's arms above it's head, that's alot of weight moving significantly above it's center of gravity and suddenly stopping with no compensatory movement offset of any other part of it's body.

Lmao

Me right after the post nut clarity kicks in…

Reminder that RoboThespian has been able to mirror a human for some 20 years.

I think it shut down because its arm hit the table and activated some sort or failsafe mode (hopefully) 😬

I think it hitting the table was after the operator thought they set it to idle so they could remove the headset. Like basically since the robot is "no longer mimicking their actions" they don't have to worry about where they are moving their hands anymore.
- I think it's even stupider: the robot's head tried to follow the removed headset tilting backwards. Thus, the whole machine lost balance.
I think it was just entering some default stance after the vr headset detected it got pulled off, and the table knocked it off balance as it was mindlessly entering the default pose.

Can I have that Trillion dollars now?