Why the rise of humanoid robots could make us less comfortable with each other
When Elon Musk talks about robotics, he rarely hides the ambition behind the dream.
Tesla’s Optimus is presented as a versatile humanoid robot who can do the heavy lifting in factories and free us from chores at home. Tesla aims to million of these robots over the next decade.
Whether your first encounter was with ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot, many of us felt the same jolt of surprise. Here was a robot that seemed to understand us in a way we didn’t expect. This made Musk’s dream of a robot companion if not close, then certainly closer.
Imagine looking through a catalog of robots like we look through household appliances. If a personal robot still seems too expensive, maybe we could hire one part-time. Maybe a dance instructor who doubles as a therapist. Families could come together to buy a robot for an elderly relative. Some people might even buy one for themselves.
The future Musk describes isn’t just mechanical, it’s emotional.
Why the humanoid form is important
The idea of robots that look like us can seem scary and threatening. But there is also a practical explanation for the desire to create robots that look like us.
A dishwasher is essentially a robot but you have to load it yourself. A humanoid robot with hands and fingers could clear the table, load the dishwasher and then feed the pets too. In other words, engineers create humanoid robots because the world is designed for human bodies.
But the humanoid form also carries an emotional charge. A machine with a face and limbs suggests something more than functionality. It is a promise of intelligence, empathy or camaraderie. Optimus taps into this deep cultural imagery. It’s part practical engineering, part theater, and part invitation to believe that we are on the verge of creating machines that can live alongside us.
There are times when a personal robot can be truly welcoming. Anyone who has been ill or cared for someone who is can imagine the appeal of help that preserves their dignity and independence. Robots, unlike humans, are not born to judge. But there is also a risk in outsourcing too much of our social world to machines.
If a robot is always there to clean up the mess, whether practical or emotional, we risk losing some of the tolerance and empathy that comes from living among others.
This is where the question of design becomes crucial. In the most dystopian version of life with generative, chatty, dexterous AI-powered robots, we retreat indoors, locked in our homes and monitored by machines that constantly “understand” and quietly worship. Convenience is maximized, but something else is lost.
If sociability really matters – if it’s worth training to be human with other humans rather than with chatbots – then the challenge becomes practical. How can we design a future that brings us closer together, instead of slowly driving us apart?
One option is to rethink where the conversation is. Rather than creating all-purpose, ever-talkative assistants in every corner of our lives, we could distribute AI across all devices and limit what those devices talk about. For example, a washing machine can discuss laundry, while a navigation system can discuss directions. But open chatter, the kind that shapes identity, values and relationships, remains something people do with others.
On a collective level, these types of design choices could reshape workplaces and shared spaces, transforming them once again into environments conducive to human conversation. Of course, this is only possible if people are encouraged to show up in person and put their phones away.
The real design challenge is not how to make machines more attentive to us, but how to make them more capable of guiding us toward each other.
It is therefore appropriate to ask ourselves what kind of national future we are quietly building. Will the robots we invite inside help us connect, or just keep us company?
Good robots, bad robots
A good robot could help a socially anxious child get to school. This can push a lonely teenager toward local activities. Or he might say to a wayward old person, “There’s a crime club starting in an hour at the library.” We can pick up a log along the way.
A bad bot leaves us exactly where we are: increasingly comfortable with a machine and less comfortable with each other.
Musk’s humanoid dream could well come true. The question is whether machines like Optimus will help us build stronger communities or quietly erode the human connections we need most.
This edited article is republished from The conversation under Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
