Imagine you’re a machine superintelligence that wants a body to move around in. Would you choose a human form?
Probably not. Biologists have no settled theory on how our bipedalism evolved, but — like everything else in biology — it’s a kludge rather than an optimal design. Moving and balancing on two limbs is an impressive engineering feat, but it is dicey on rough terrain and puts terrible pressure on a spine first evolved for quadrupeds. If we hadn’t started from four limbs, might not a centaur-like shape be better? Yet in the tech sector the humanoid robot is the cultural handmaiden to another holy grail: artificial general intelligence. This week, Meta was reported to be following Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia in planning a big investment into AI-powered humanoid robots. Their initial focus will be household chores. Companies like Figure AI and Agility Robotics are already building electronic bipeds for warehousing tasks like moving goods around. But outside of quite specific applications, there’s really not much need for these machines. It’s no accident that humanoid robots and AGI are the fever dreams of nerds raised on science fiction (I say this as one of them). Both assume that the human form, whether physical or mental, is the pinnacle of evolution.

Full opinion : What does a humanoid robot bring to the table for a common man.