Humanoid robots are one of those ideas that never truly goes out of style — it does, however, tend to ebb and flow across the decades. Whatever you happen to think about the project or the company that built it, Tesla’s Optimus prototype has revived the conversation around the form factor and efficacy and viability of general-purpose robots. Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert told me in an interview this week, “I thought that they’d gotten a lot more done than I expected, and they still have a long way to go.”

It’s also reopened the debate. When I spoke to Playground Global partner Peter Barrett last week, he was quick to point out that our bodies aren’t exactly the hallmark of efficiency or product design, even if they made us sufficiently capable of outsmarting or out-running a wooly mammoth back in the day. The flip side of that conversation certainly makes sense however: We built our environment with us in mind, so it follows that we’d make robots in our image to perform our jobs.

Figure, which comes out of stealth this week, is very much in the second camp. Back in September, we broke the news of the startup’s existence. Founded by Archer co-founder Brett Adcock (who has also funded the company to the tune of $100 million), the startup is spending lot of time and money to build a general-purpose bipedal humanoid robot. It’s not an easy dream in any respect, of course. That no one has yet managed to crack the code certainly isn’t for lack of trying.

If it’s true that robots are taking our jobs, they should also be able to take out the trash and clean the bathroom for us.

Costing tens of thousands of dollars, these robots were clearing tables and keeping cafeterias clean.

If human workers have been complaining about robots taking over their jobs, the macroeconomic situation has now put robots out of work.

Over a hundred robots at Google’s parent company, Alphabet, have allegedly been fired after the team maintaining them was shut down, Wired reported.

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After a dip in advertisement revenues last year, Google’s Alphabet is preparing for the worse by firing expensive robots. Over a hundred robots have already been fired after the team maintaining them was shut down.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has asked for robots to be taxed for taking over human jobs in his new book titled “It’s OK To Be Mad About Capitalism.”

The longest independent senator in U.S history argues for the adoption of a “robot tax” to mitigate the impact of automation on human workers, according to the book released on Tuesday.

Bain & Company has recently announced a global services alliance with OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. Bain says that it will be using the AI-powered chatbot for creating ‘tailored digital solutions for its clients’.