Short answer: Sam Nadler says the home robot costs about $20,000 or around $500 a month. Jordan Metzner says a Wall Street Journal tester found a human on the other side controlling it, and household chores are far less constrained than driving.
Watch this answer from Episode 20 (starts at 19:45) · Episode 20 notes and transcript
From Episode 20: Compliance, Pomelli, and the Rise of the Robots, starting at 19:45.
Sam Nadler [19:44]: Up next, and I think everyone saw different posts about this recent product launch or, I should say, robot launch, but the new, I guess, home robot, Neo, I think, if you weren't going to read into the details, it looks fairly interesting. But it is this home robot that kinda hit the news circuit really hard over the last seven days. I think the price tag was about 20,000 as a onetime purchase or something like $500 a month. And it looks like, from a quick glance, like, it's able to take care of your home tasks, but I think there's some hidden text about what it can and can't actually do, which I'll I'll I'll let you reveal.
Jordan Metzner [20:38]: Yeah. Every single week we've seen, like, not week, but I mean, often we've seen kind of these companies come out with a new robot or idea that can, like, do all these cool things inside your house. And then it's always, like, a little bit too good to be true. And if you look at this robot, it is definitely too good to be true. And so I think someone from the Wall Street Journal tested the robot, and they found out that, there was a human on the other side kinda communicating with them. And so really the robot was just like an interface for the human, which means that it's not more efficient yet. So it is a cool idea. It is cool that that happened, but I think we're not there yet. I believe that Tesla was doing this when they did some launches using the Optimus robot. They were having, like, humans control it as well. But, having a humanoid robot do all these things in your house is a dream. I think it's a very difficult reality. And, I have a lot of faith in Tesla and Elon, but, I know a lot of companies were going for it, but it is a hard problem. And it's not constrained.
Jordan Metzner [21:43]: I mean, driving, there's a lot of, like, things that can happen to you, but, for the most part, like, driving is like, you kinda put your foot on the gas with a brake, and then you turn the wheel back and forth kind of you know, there's not that many options of things you can do as a driver. You can go or you can't go, and you can turn and can't turn kind of thing. But, to do dishes in a house, can just think about how complicated that can be, and, everybody's house is different, and the sink is different, and the dishwasher is different. And, I mean, there's just so many kind of variables to the problem. So I think it's a challenging problem, but it's certainly a dream like I think that a lot of us probably wanna live. I mean, imagine having a home robot who did all your dishes and washed all your clothes for you while you're sleeping. Sounds like a nice way to live.
