Robots have been in the spotlight recently. In 2024, Jensen Huang emphasized, “everything that moves will one day be autonomous" and Bill Gates noted that “if we get the technology right, the uses for robots will be almost limitless.” Investment has surged, especially in humanoid robotics, with companies like Figure, Tesla, 1X, and Apptronik pursuing general-purpose machines capable of handling a wide range of tasks.

Conversation often centers on capability: Will robots live up to the hype? Will it be humanoid generalists, or specialists that solve our problems? Will they enter homes or factories first? How will companies get the training data they need? What jobs will they take? Will robots fulfill the century-old dream of ubiquitous autonomous helpers, or perhaps the equally longstanding & interwoven nightmare of mechanical overlords? How soon?

I want to focus on a different question: not what robots will be able to do, but how they will be received. In other words, if they are built somewhat capably in the coming years, how will we react? What will we do?

I’d like to look at a few influences on this uncertain outcome, starting with fiction, discourse. In a separate post, I’ll look at how people react to autonomous motion in our environments.

Narrative Context

Fiction would seem to have primed us with a mixture of suspicion and excitement. The term ‘robot’ was popularized by the 1923 play R.U.R. and featuring the destruction of humanity at the hands of rebelling humanoid workers.

The trope has only evolved in the century since, with robots offering science fiction creators a useful tool to invoke and explore such existentially and politically charged questions as what it means to be human or what it means to live with automation. Robot tropes are both familiar and longstanding.

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There’s a good deal of academic writing investigating how fictional narratives play on real hopes and anxieties, though it’s largely commentary on (e.g. 1, 2, 3) or categorization of themes (e.g. A, B, C). I’ve not found as much rooted in data on individual’s experience of or views on robots as informed by the fiction content they consume. One 2010 paper looked at the overlap in characteristics between fictional robot representations and student expectations finding that both conceptualized robots as having “humanlike cognitive capabilities, but not social capabilities.” A 2015 paper found that reading a science fiction story involving robots prior to interaction with a humanoid reduced eeriness ratings and increased perceived human-likeness. I’d like to see / conduct more research in this area. Nonetheless, if a short story can change how someone experiences a real-life interaction with a robot, what might the influence of several TV shows amount to?

I’d like to find or conduct more research in this area as I do think the context offers robot builders real challenges and opportunities. My interviews of UT students about their reactions to Spot walking in and out of the robotics department (next door) certainly included fiction references as a matter of course, e.g. “It just reminds me of Black Mirror.”

Apple’s famous 1984 ad offers one possible strategy:

On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.”

By representing Macintosh as the courageous, colorful, dynamic antidote to viewer’s techno-dystopic fears, Apple parlayed those fears into excitement for its own image of the future.

Perhaps robotics companies will, in their own way, offer a vision that takes us beyond the tropes — or perhaps fiction will meet the moment by continuing to expand its portrayals into a set of useful and wide ranging investigations of human-robot interactions and relationships. Indeed, we seem to have an increasing repertoire of unexpectedly heroic helpers like WALL·E, Baymax, and BB8 to guide us out of the uncanny valley, not to mention Disney’s cute new bipedal characters built for it’s parks, or the thoughtful dialogue in its shows:

Droids are not good or bad. They are neutral reflections of those who imprint them. - Kuiil, The Mandalorian (season 1)

Of course, fiction is only a small portion of the larger narrative context of robotics, automation, and mechanization broadly. RUR’s original depiction of robots was a vehicle for political and philosophical commentary—part of a much longer history of tension around automation that stretches from Luddism through recent opposition to port automation. While fiction clearly effects how we think about robots, the nature and scale of its influence are unclear, likely varying significantly across individuals and cultures.

What we do at least know from survey and sentiment data is that attitudes toward robots are notably mixed and context-dependent. A 2018 Brookings survey found that while 61% felt uncomfortable with robots, only 17% actively worried about them. People showed strong resistance to robots in caregiving roles (84% opposed) but less concern about cleaning applications (68% opposed). A Eurobarometer survey of nearly 28,000 Europeans revealed that positive reception correlates strongly with being male, urban, higher class, and digitally literate—suggesting demographic and experiential factors may matter more than national economic context. A 2017 Pew survey also found that 85% of Americans favored limiting robots to dangerous or unhealthy jobs, with nearly half (47%) strongly supporting this restriction—highlighting a protective, boundary-oriented stance toward deployment.

Complementing this, a large-scale sentiment analysis of over 56,000 tweets, Kickstarter comments, and news articles found that public opinion is generally positive, especially in tech-forward communities, but highly polarized around certain robot types, such as sex and assistive robots. Media coverage was more neutral and less emotionally charged, shifting in recent years from a focus on industrial robots toward social and service-oriented ones.

You can find sensitivity to these mixed views in robotics startup branding narratives. They generally emphasize the benefits of robots to humans, as if to proactively dispel any association with automation, unemployment, or fiction’s many renegade machines. Consider:

Robust.ai (warehouse specialist)- “We make robots work for people” - the goal here is “to build something more like a working dog than an employee” which aligns with my understanding of Leila Takayama and Rodney Brooks’ philosophy. In this case, the statement is more than just a reassurance about the use cases or impact, but a message about their design approach.

Apptronik (humanoids) - “Building robots for humans”

1X Technologies (humanoids) | Safe, Intelligent Humanoids - “Building a world where we do more of what we love, while our humanoid companions handle the rest.”

Figure.ai (humanoids) - Brett Adcock includes an entire ‘master plan’ on the website, making the company’s mission and reasoning very clear:

“There are two schools of thought on how to solve real-world robotics: build an environment specifically for robots, or reverse it and build robots for our human environment. We could have either millions of different types of robots serving unique tasks or one humanoid robot with a general interface, serving millions of tasks.”

It’s notable how zero-sum this narrative competition between two schools of thought—namely the specialist (like robust.ai) v/s humanoid generalist approaches — seems to be. I suspect part of the polarization comes from industry wariness of triggering anxiety around automation (whether by actual employment effects or by philosophical cues). Importantly, Bret’s characterization of the first school of thought — “build an environment specifically for robots” — is not how adherents of that camp would self-describe. The plan continues:

“At Figure, we believe general purpose humanoid robots built for a human environment is the desired route to have the largest overall impact. For that reason, our humanoid robots resemble the human body in shape — two legs, two arms, hands, and screen for a face. With one product we can meet the complex human environment with human-like capabilities, and provide endless types of support across a variety of circumstances.”

While a public master plan likely serves to draw aligned talent, it also seems to serve as a public ‘explainer’ to differentiate their construction of humanoids from some perceived thoughtless, non-humanistic, runaway-capitalistic fulfillment of a science fiction fantasy (and there are certainly academic narratives around automation of that vein).

Importantly, these reactions are all anticipatory. Most of Pew or Brookings’ survey respondents had limited if any direct experience with robots as autonomous, mobile entities distinct from simple automated appliances. Most humanoid companies haven’t meaningfully deployed yet (except Agility and pilot programs). Of the above, Robust.ai seems like the most informed by robot deployment experience (thanks to Rodney Brooks', Roombas, and Sawyer).

This leaves an additional, related, challenge to consider as robots begin entering daily life: beyond the tensions in the cultural and intellectual context, how will people react when they actually encounter machines that move with apparent purpose through their spaces?

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