Neo robot sounds like the answer to our home chore prayers...but also a potential privacy nightmare

Some day, someone will come up with an equation that accurately defines the tipping point between our natural laziness and williness to give up personal privacy to relieve some of it. I don't think today is that day.

Years ago, I wrote about a robot that you could teleoperate from anywhere in the world over WiFi. We tried it in our offices, and I even ran it around my home, where it freaked out my family. Back then, we didn't think too much about the privacy implications because it was me, not a third party, navigating the robot and seeing what it could see.

Fast forward to 2025, and we're considering placing 1X Neo Beta, a $20,000 robot, in our homes that can, to learn, be teleoperated by a company, and it's fostering a mixture of excitement and deep concern.