Robots in 2026 — the rise of Terminator this is not

Like a DJ wrapping up a particularly tight set, the Tesla Optimus robot reached to its ears and removed an invisible pair of headphones...and then keeled over, revealing, it seems, its teleoperation and, perhaps, peeling back the curtain on the fiction of many cutting-edge humanoid robotics. It also makes clear what the immediate future of robotics holds, and it's neither as awesome nor as bad as you were expecting.

That incident, caught on video when numerous Tesla Optimus robots were set up as engaging bartenders who served drinks and chatted you up, but were all likely controlled by headset-wearing teleoperators, demonstrated what many people think about most of the current bleeding-edge humanoid robots like Optimus, 1X Neo Bot, and Figure 03 from Figure AI: the coolest stuff they do is mere fiction.

This potentially uncomfortable truth weighed on my mind as I considered robotics ...