James Vincent

There has been a legitimate leap forward in terms of capabilities.

However, however, however, that does not mean that we are matching the hype that is being pushed out by people like Elon Musk, by other leading companies who are saying, we're going to have one of these robots in your house next year, and it's going to be doing all the chores you need and will never make a mistake, and it certainly won't fall over and kill your cat or something like this.

I think those promises are just, they're not true.

They're simply not true.

I can see humanoid robots becoming a more common presence within both the work and the home over the next 10 plus years.

Certainly, absolutely I can.

But in the next five years, in the next three years, I really doubt it.

So we don't have to yet worry that, let's say, that robot you pushed over in Austin is going to come back and kill you in London anytime soon.

No, no.

I'm planning on moving to the country where there's going to be many muddy paths and sort of rivers that it has to cross over.

You know what the English countryside is like.

It's full of, you know, forests and things like this.

The robots, they will never find me.

You could just be playing ik-ak-ak with your friends quietly and be undisturbed.

That's all we do.

St.

James wrote Kicking Robots for Harpers.

When we're back on Today Explained, we're going to ask a guy who's been tinkering with robotics for decades the essential question, why robots?

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