When we think of the existential threats posed by new technology, we usually think of something like the recent negotiations between Anthropic and the Pentagon about how artificial intelligence can be used in the military. It’s scary to think – how long will it be before a nuclear weapon can be detonated without any human intervention?
We’ve spent so much time thinking about these potential disasters that we haven’t prepared for the more immediate danger in our midst: dancing robots.
A dancing robot at the hot pot restaurant Haidilao in Cupertino, Calif., boogied a little too hard, got too close to a table and started smashing plates and sending plates and chopsticks everywhere, prompting restaurant staff to intervene, according to a video posted on Chinese social network Xiaohongshu by user Meooow.
From what we can see from the video, at least three employees struggled to restrain the robot as it flailed its arms around. A Haidilao employee appears to be looking at his phone, perhaps trying to switch to something on an app that controls the robot. It’s possible that the robot — which appears to be an AgiBot X2 robot that was unveiled at the CES conference in January — has a kill switch, but staff may not have known how to operate it.
If you’re not familiar with hot pot, you should know that, as the name suggests, it involves very hot pots of soup. Nobody likes wasted food, but if the robot were to knock over tube bowls of bone broth, it wouldn’t just be a culinary disaster, it could seriously burn someone. Not to mention any potential blunt-force damage from the now moshing automaton.
When The Killers sang “Are we human or are we dancer,” we didn’t realize they were asking us to take a stand in the future robot wars.
Haidilao confirmed the mechanical disdain in a statement to NBC News, but denied that the robot was “malfunctioning or out of control.”
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“In this case, the robot was brought closer to a dining table at a guest’s request, which is not its typical operating mode,” the Chinese chain of hot pot restaurants told NBC News in a statement. “The limited space affected its movement during the performance.”
AgiBot did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Haidilao has experimented with a “smart restaurant” in Beijing that used robot servers and broth mixers. It seems that this Haidilao restaurant was just using this robot for entertainment purposes, but things got out of hand when it danced a little too close to the customers.
Many startups are working to bring robots to the foodservice industry, like Shin Starr, who is working on making fully autonomous kitchens. Pudu Robotics’ BellaBot, a cute, cat-like robot, can direct customers to their seats and bring out their food when it’s ready.
Maybe it’s safer than humanoid robots, because for now at least – BellaBot has no limbs.