When 1X Technologies revealed its humanoid robot, Neo, the headlines came fast. A sleek machine backed by OpenAI, marketed as the first home-ready humanoid, and available for preorder at around $20,000.
The idea is simple but staggering: a physical assistant that can clean, carry and learn. Neo is undoubtedly a fascinating step in the right direction, but not the leap forward that we’ve been waiting for. The future isn’t entirely autonomous yet.
Humans are still puppeteering it. When the machine in your home still relies on a person behind a screen, the question is bigger than how smart it is: it’s about whose eyes it’s seeing through and how safe your personal information really is.
Neo’s abilities, as impressive as they are, depend heavily on teleoperation. Human controllers guide many of its movements in real-time, helping the robot navigate environments, handle objects and complete tasks it hasn’t learned to do on its own. This approach helps robotics companies train AI systems through imitation and reinforcement. It also means that your personal assistant isn’t truly personal and you won’t get the privacy you want with it. They’re advanced tools that still rely on human reasoning and are connected to a system that doesn’t just learn the inside of your home — but also owns that data.
The Rise of the Robots
That reality becomes even more important when we consider where humanoids could have the most significant effect, like in elder care. Robots like Neo could assist with daily routines, provide companionship or even monitor health for aging populations. In Japan, South Korea and parts of Europe, pilots are already testing this future.
In those contexts, the distinction between assistance and genuine care is crucial. Robots might lift a patient, detect a fall or make small talk, but they don’t understand context, intent or emotion the way people do. They can sense your heartbeat, your movements and even your voice, but they can’t sense you. If that information isn’t fully contained and encrypted within your own personal system, then it’s not truly yours.
The Illusion of Autonomy
The current wave of humanoid projects, from Figure AI’s Figure 02 to Tesla’s Optimus, promises a new industrial era where machines handle labor that’s dull, dirty or dangerous. Neo, however, brings that vision closer to home. It’s about more than productivity: it’s about companionship and assistance.
This shift toward consumer use makes questions about trust, capability and readiness impossible to ignore. Once a robot enters your living room, it doesn’t just handle your chores; it witnesses your life. Even when Neo becomes fully autonomous and no longer needs human oversight, what about the data it’s storing as it’s working for you?
In industrial settings, constant monitoring is expected. In a home, especially for someone who relies on daily assistance, the stakes are different. The home is where care, attention and dignity meet. Machines need to navigate emotions, timing and human needs. Most importantly, it must guarantee discretion and complete ownership, not just of the bot itself, but also of the data it collects. When that robot’s sensors, cameras and microphones stream data through networks controlled by its maker, not by you, autonomy becomes the difference between help and surveillance.
What We’ll Need to Make Actual Progress
For embodied AI to reach the kind of leap that language models have achieved for text, it’ll need to master intent, emotion, context and, most importantly, discretion.
Understanding what a person wants isn’t the same as following instructions. It means reading tone, environment and timing, the invisible cues and signals that guide human interaction.
Progress will depend on breakthroughs in multimodal perception and device-based reasoning. Language models can simulate conversation, but physical intelligence requires grounding, which is the ability to connect perception to action safely and ethically. That grounding must also extend to data itself. AI that acts on your behalf should store and protect your data rather than using it as training material for someone else.
Until robots can interpret why a person gives a command — and not just how — human oversight will remain essential, especially in caregiving, where mistakes can have real consequences.
The Social Contract of Living with Machines
Before humanoids can become part of daily life, society will need to redefine its comfort zones. The shift from screens to embodied intelligence will feel far more personal than the jump from desktop to mobile devices. Robots that live among people will see what we see, hear what we hear and, in some ways, know us better than we know ourselves.
Their potential benefits are enormous. They can help address one of the world’s most pressing challenges: providing care where human support is stretched thin, assisting people in staying independent and easing isolation. That closeness also exposes a new kind of vulnerability. Until your devices operate locally, think independently and keep your information encrypted by default, they serve two masters: you and the network that built them.
That same intimacy shows what these machines still can’t do. They don’t understand all the nuances of attention and compassion that define caregiving. Until they can, their value lies in assisting humans but not replacing them. The first generation of home robots will be powerful tools. They’re still tools that are guided by human hands and decisions.
Autonomy is what turns technology from something you use into something that truly serves you. Until robots can think and protect as independently as they act, the future will continue to be puppeteered by people.