If you’ve been poking around the tech corners of the internet in the past few years, you probably heard about the new Neo Home Robot from 1X, a robotics and AI company based in Palo Alto. This product is quite new in terms of direct-to-consumer distribution channel, and it shows with quite a negative coverage of the tech reviews. MKBHD released a sixteen-minute video criticizing and raising some valid problems regarding this home robot. 

I’ve checked the company’s website as well as watched a Joanna Stern’s demo video on it, and I’ve formed some opinions. I know that making good products, especially consumer-facing ones, is extremely hard to do. Creating a humanoid robot helper is probably one of the most ambitious things to work on, and I really appreciate the effort.

Reading the comments made me think just how easy it is to dunk on the new project, let the pessimist, which runs most people’s lives, run wild, and get that sweet social approval as other like-minded people give you virtual thumbs up, which deep down make you feel whole for just a short second.

If you don’t know, I’m a pro technology of any kind. I love indie apps, games, gadgets, and even small robots. I love good products. It’s what makes my heart tick. So naturally, I’m really excited about this product. In Joanna’s video, we can see that we’re at the very early stages of it, but I believe there’s an actual underlying need for such a product.

Of course, we can already predict some of the problems when this product will launch, and there are probably a long list of known unknowns as well as unknown unknowns that the company and its customers will have to deal with. But isn’t there always some issues with new technologies that we eventually solve or just minimise to the point where the benefit of the product outweighs its cons? When some social contract changes or a new revolutionary product comes along, it makes a huge dent in the proposed timeline of history. I think 1X’s Neo or similar product might just do that.

Do I Want Neo Home Robot in My Home?

At the “current” state, NO! The idea of a random person teleoperating the robot in my home is not something I am able to accept just yet. There are some guardrails the company is building for teleoperations, but they still don’t sit well with me. I’m excited for this technology, and I will be following 1X closely!

A while ago I wrote an article about abundance and our continued struggle. I don’t think there’s a cure for the human condition, but can we imagine a world where Neo is a balm for it?