I watched a video recently of a man speaking with a robotic figure and tasking the robot with some basic requests that didn’t seem too crazy and like it would change the AI landscape. But I watched it again and again with sound and started to see the bigger picture. The play is thinking 5,10 years ahead of what we see, to a place where Robot Companions power the workforce and support people who need assisted care.
This made a lot of sense after some rewatching and thinking about the pathways coming out of this for that company.
The company involved is Figure. They develop general-purpose AI-powered robots.
So it turns out that OpenAI the company behind ChatGPT are collaborating with Figure to build and continue to develop humanoid robots based on LLMsm which use Large Language Models. The vision is to share knowledge and tech to create a more useful companion.
I can see from all the comments and memes going viral that the doomsday preppers are not happy about this and starting to pack their RVs and drive out to their self-sustainable bunkers. I really do not think we need to be that naive about where this is going. They are not building war machines or at least not just yet. But military funding does change peoples perspective about what they should be building.
You should see it for yourself.
Disclaimer: The following Tweet and video are posted by a verified account. But there are claims that the video is scripted and voiceover, I would implore you to do your own research around this.
After watching this and digging around I think they are still very early on in their work but I think they are by far the furthest along. This is an interesting space given how rapidly AI is developing and its applications being utilised worldwide.
How I would like to see Robotic Companions used in the Retail sector
If someone put me in charge the first thing I would develop is a fair deployment policy that businesses need to adhere to. We can not have businesses around the world just replacing their workforces with general purpose AI-powered Robots. This would cause way more harm than good with millions jobless.
My reasoning is that businesses are different in size, scale, and architecture and each should be considered very carefully to have a fair policy that considers their current business model and some timelines to make any big changes that result in 40% or more of their workforce being let go due to new AI robotic workers being used.
Once the policies are in place I can see
- AI Robot workers that specialise in Dangerous environment work environments
- AI Robot workers that assist the elderly and hospital-supporting staffing and
- AI Robot workers in factories handling packaging, shipping, sorting and stacking of goods
- AI Robot workers being used in riot situations supporting the police on the front line with some caveats around human contact.
I really don’t see much point in having retail store assistants or front of store attendants for AI Robot workers at least not yet. The best way to roll these new AI workers out is to slowly release them and make it a familiar experience for the public.
One note I always come back to with the adoption of new tech is this example. I observed over several months a large supermarket foodchain set up 6 self service checkouts to process more customers autonomously and then increased the number of self checkout machines to 16 and reduced the human checkout operator ailse to 2 lanes. People started trying the self service lanes but became frustrated with the broken machines, failure to process orders, lack of assistance and confusion of how to use the machines.
The supermarket sent out a big apology letter and the next week reopened more human managed checkout lanes while keeping the same number of self checkout machines open. The result from what I can see is that its 50/50 split with both being used and having demand. But going too hard in one direction too quickly results in problems.
How I would like to see Robotic Companions used by everyday people
This is going to happen and we can thanks Robert Downey Jnr for this ever since Jarvis showed up in his Iron man movie I have been obsessed with smart home assistants. Ive tried them all and one day Ill add my reviews and thoughts to this blog. But having a smart home is where the AI powered robots are headed.
AI Powered Robotic Butlers. Smart robots to help you as an AI powered butler is more where I believe the start will be.
Aged Care & Disabled Support work. Then moving into support for aged care and disabled people. This will be a very well received use case I believe. 24/7 care from someone who does not sleep, has the entire medical bible in their programming and can connect to emergency services in seconds. This is a winning use case.
Home run Businesses. I can see home run businesses in the future using AI Robots to help fulfil packages, take orders, do the accounting, manual labour and general business tasking to help free up the founders and the stay at home mums.
Robot Companion sex trade. I hate to think this but it really is inevitable, there will be some sick f#ck who dress the Robot as a sex object, wraps skin over them and does NSFW things to their robotic companion. This will happen regardless of any rules and regulations. I am a realist and if the authorities cant stop it happening to people then they wont be stopping it from happening to companions.

What would I do if I had a Robotic Companion
I’ve thought about this a lot and the key things I’d have my robot buddy do is pretty rudimentary compared to what others might do.
Help my family with tasks, like my parents more than me my dads always in his shed building and doing renovations and he’s in his 70;s so having the robot assist him with renovations and measurements basic house tasking would be a dream.
Play me at Chess and beat me so bad that I need to study the game more. This would also open up some interesting 1 to 1 dialogue where we could exchange chat about the programming, limitations and perception that the robot worker has of the situation and the world around them.
Code with me and challenge my decisions as I build new software so I have the entire code repository of the internet in by robot buddies head asking me why I didn’t use x and y or failed to utilise this feature over that one. That would make me a million times better
So from a crazy promo video and AI powered robotics to my use cases and how I see it all unfolding in the coming years I hope this was a good read for you.