Quick AI analysis of this funny history:
Original Post by Benjie Holson on June 10, 2025
https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/a-brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong
Early History: Various automata were built powered by water, clockwork or steam. Redditors at the time argue that they are not really robots. This is despite the fact that the word “robot” would not be invented until 1920.
1495: Leonardo da Vinci invents a mechanical knight that sits up, moves its head and waves its arm. Despite a lack of working prototype he immediately gets over 500M in seed funding, a feat that would not be replicated until the launch of Figure AI, five centuries later.
1770: Wolfgang von Kempelen builds the Mechanical Turk, a chess playing automaton with a human hidden inside controlling it. The twin values of casual racism and investor fraud would later be codified into the “AI startup common practice” of using overseas call centers to fake artificial intelligence until the founders run out of money.
| Year | Statement Summary | ✅ Verifiable Truth | ❌ Satirical / Impossible Part | 🧠 Explanation | 📎 Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-1920 | Early automata using water, clockwork, steam | ✅ Ancient and medieval automata did use such mechanisms | ❌ “Redditors at the time”, “not really robots” | “Redditors” is an anachronism; joke mocks modern definitional gatekeeping projected into the past. | Automaton |
| 1495 | Leonardo da Vinci’s mechanical knight | ✅ da Vinci sketched a humanoid mechanical knight (likely functional if built) | ❌ “$500M in seed funding”, “Figure AI comparison” | da Vinci’s design is real, but he had no startup funding. Figure AI raised ~$675M in 2024; this is a satire on inflated modern valuations. | Leonardo’s robot, Figure AI |
| 1770 | Mechanical Turk, human-operated chess automaton | ✅ Kempelen’s Turk was a fraudulent automaton controlled by a hidden person | ❌ “codified into AI startup best practices”, “racism + investor fraud” | Sarcastic comparison between historical deception and early “AI” companies faking intelligence with human labor. | Mechanical Turk, Ghost workers in AI |
1920: Karel Čapek coins the word ‘robot’ in a play about mechanical laborers who turn on their human masters. Everyone is very excited and decides they want one right away.
1939: At the World’s Fair, Westinghouse Electric presents a replacement for the modern man: Elektro, a humanoid robot capable of talking, responding to voice commands and smoking cigarettes. After 32 consecutive hours of sitting on its favorite armchair and demanding a brandy, Westinghouse Electric decides that perhaps they should have made a replacement for the modern woman instead, but that project is shuttered before it can really begin due to the outbreak of World War II.
1943: Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts invent artificial neural networks. Everyone ignores them for several decades.
1961: George Devol creates Unimate, the first industrial robot, and puts it to work at the General Motors assembly line. Redditors at the time argue that this, also, is not really a robot because it doesn’t have legs or LLM integration.
1968: Single layer neural networks (called perceptrons in the quaint vernacular of the time) are hailed as the Next Big Thing. AI is declared solved. Scientists prepare for the coming technological utopia.
| Year | Statement Summary | ✅ Verifiable Truth | ❌ Satirical / Impossible Part | 🧠 Explanation | 📎 Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1920 | Term “robot” coined by Karel Čapek | ✅ “Robot” first appeared in Čapek’s play R.U.R. | ❌ “Everyone wants one right away” | The term was popularized, but robots as we imagine them weren't feasible. Satire on tech hype cycles. | Robot etymology, R.U.R. |
| 1939 | Westinghouse’s Elektro at the World’s Fair | ✅ Elektro was a real humanoid robot that could talk and smoke | ❌ “32 hours in armchair with brandy”, “replacement for the modern woman” | Elektro did simple speech and motion tricks. The brandy/armchair joke satirizes 1930s gender roles and anthropomorphic projections onto robots. | Elektro |
| 1943 | McCulloch and Pitts invent neural networks | ✅ They published a foundational paper on artificial neurons | ❌ “Everyone ignores them for decades” | Their work was foundational but underutilized until computational advances decades later. The exaggeration is directionally true. | McCulloch–Pitts model |
| 1961 | Unimate used at GM factory | ✅ First programmable industrial robot deployed at GM in 1961 | ❌ “Redditors argue it’s not a robot due to no legs or LLMs” | LLMs didn’t exist; the joke mocks shifting goalposts for defining “real AI” or “real robots.” | Unimate |
| 1968 | Perceptrons hyped as solving AI | ✅ Single-layer perceptrons were overhyped in the 1960s | ❌ “Technological utopia declared” | AI hype cycles repeat. This exaggerates the 1960s optimism about perceptrons' capability, foreshadowing the later AI winter. | Perceptron |
1969: Stanford researchers create a mobile robot called, in an unusually honest moment of branding, Shakey. Programmed in lisp, it is able to perceive and navigate about its environment, take natural language commands, open doors and use light switches. The researchers invent A*, a popular path planning algorithm. Many of these techniques would be lost in the first AI Winter (1970–1984), only to be rediscovered in 2008 by archeologists at Willow Garage who will chip the antique rolls of magnetic tape out of Menlo Park’s technology-rich shale deposits.
1969: Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert publish ‘Perceptrons: Worst Idea Ever’ showing that single layer neural networks quote, “can’t even learn, like, XOR or whatever. I mean what the shit? Total clowntown.” This damning indictment causes Neural Network research to become dreadfully unfashionable, ushering in the first AI Winter.
1970–1984: First AI Winter
1986: There is mounting excitement over Expert Systems which are hailed as the Next Big Thing. AI is declared solved. Scientists prepare for the coming technological utopia.
1991: Expert systems turn out to not solve everything. Everyone is disappointed and several are fired. President H. W. Bush is forced to call in the National Guard to contain the lawless shanty-towns of unemployed Expert System researchers that spring up all around Palo Alto.
1992–2012: Second AI Winter
1997: Sojourner becomes the first robot to operate on another planet. Planned to operate for 7 Martian days, it continued to be operational for an 83 day mission. This will be the last time a first-prototype robot would ever be less buggy than expected.
1999: Sony launches AIBO, a dog-shaped robot pet. It sells out in Japan in the first 20 minutes sparking decades of social-robot copy-cats that would all ultimately go bankrupt.
| Year | Statement Summary | ✅ Verifiable Truth | ❌ Satirical / Impossible Part | 🧠 Explanation | 📎 Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | Shakey robot and A* algorithm | ✅ Shakey was the first general-purpose mobile robot; A* was invented for it | ❌ “Archaeologists rediscover it in 2008” | The satire mocks tech cycles and the rediscovery of earlier work by younger researchers decades later. | Shakey, A* algorithm |
| 1969 | Minsky & Papert publish Perceptrons | ✅ Their book highlighted limitations of single-layer perceptrons | ❌ “Worst Idea Ever”, fake quotes like “clowntown” | The actual criticism was rigorous and academic. Satirical language parodies how damning it was to the field at the time. | Perceptrons (book) |
| 1970–1984 | First AI Winter | ✅ The first AI Winter followed disillusionment with symbolic AI and perceptrons | ❌ None in this line | This was a real funding and interest collapse. | AI Winter |
| 1986 | Hype around Expert Systems | ✅ Expert systems were heavily researched and invested in during the 1980s | ❌ “AI is declared solved again” | This continues the satirical theme of repeating hype cycles in AI history. | Expert system |
| 1991 | Expert systems fail; fictional response | ✅ Expert systems fell short and became commercially unviable | ❌ “National Guard called in”, “shanty-towns of AI researchers” | Satire on the severity of the crash and over-employment in the field, exaggerating consequences of a real collapse. | AI Winter |
| 1992–2012 | Second AI Winter | ✅ This period saw another lull in symbolic AI before neural networks resurged | ❌ None here | Factually accurate; another long quiet period in AI. | AI Winter |
| 1997 | Sojourner rover on Mars | ✅ NASA’s Sojourner was the first mobile Mars rover; it exceeded expectations | ❌ “Last time a prototype was less buggy than expected” | Satirical jab at modern over-promising and under-delivering in robotics/hardware. | Sojourner |
| 1999 | Sony launches AIBO robot dog | ✅ AIBO was a robotic pet sold by Sony; it was popular and sold out in Japan | ❌ “Every social robot since went bankrupt” | Many robotic pet companies failed, but not all. Exaggerates a real trend for comedic effect. | AIBO |
2000: Honda unveils ASIMO, a child sized humanoid robot that could walk, wave, talk and respond to voice commands. When asked what the robot was to be used for, Honda CEO Hiroyuki Yoshino was seen to gesticulate wildly at ASIMO repeating “Robot. Robot! ROBOT!”
2002: Brilliant, dynamic, and strikingly handsome roboticist Rodney Brooks (who happens to be this author’s boss) releases a robot vacuum called Roomba, much to the chagrin of cats everywhere. The Roomba would go on to sell 40 million units, making it the first and most successful consumer robot, causing Redditors at the time to argue that it is not really a robot so it shouldn’t count.
2005: Boston Dynamics creates BigDog: a four-legged robot expressly engineered to generate YouTube views.
2007: Scott Hassan and Steve Cousins found Willow Garage, a robotics lab dedicated to open robotics research. It would create the PR2 research robot and the wildly successful ROS operating system. ROS is used to this day by enthusiastic researchers and frustrated companies who can’t figure out how to migrate off of it.
2008: The number of deployed industrial robot arms surpasses 1M. Redditors decide that none of these are robots as there are a lot of them so they aren’t cool anymore.
2012: The rover Curiosity lands on Mars to start its two-year mission. Tragically the rover continues to operate marooned on Mars to this day, while NASA desperately lobbies for the $38B in funding needed for a successful rescue mission.
| Year | Statement Summary | ✅ Verifiable Truth | ❌ Satirical / Impossible Part | 🧠 Explanation | 📎 Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Honda unveils ASIMO humanoid robot | ✅ ASIMO was unveiled by Honda in 2000; it walked, responded to commands | ❌ “CEO gesticulating ‘Robot. Robot! ROBOT!’” | The robot is real; the CEO quote is invented for comedic emphasis on unclear use cases for humanoids. | ASIMO |
| 2002 | Rodney Brooks releases Roomba | ✅ Roomba launched in 2002; it became the most successful consumer robot | ❌ “Cats’ chagrin”, “Redditors say it’s not a robot” | Cat-riding Roomba videos were real; satire mocks gatekeeping over what counts as a “robot.” | Roomba, Rodney Brooks |
| 2005 | Boston Dynamics builds BigDog | ✅ BigDog was developed as a quadruped robot for rough terrain | ❌ “Engineered to generate YouTube views” | Satire exaggerates the real viral popularity of Boston Dynamics' robots and their military funding origins. | BigDog, Boston Dynamics |
| 2007 | Willow Garage founded; ROS and PR2 developed | ✅ Willow Garage created PR2 and released ROS, still widely used | ❌ “Can't figure out how to migrate off of it” | Many robotics teams use ROS long-term. Satirical jab at its entrenchment and complexity. | Willow Garage, ROS |
| 2008 | Industrial robot arms surpass 1 million deployed | ✅ Milestone reached in the late 2000s | ❌ “Redditors decide they aren’t cool anymore” | Mocking how popular or “cool” status often overrides technical merit in public opinion. | Industrial robot |
| 2012 | Curiosity rover lands on Mars | ✅ Curiosity successfully landed and is still operational beyond its planned mission | ❌ “$38B rescue mission”, “marooned tragedy” | Mission ongoing and productive. Satire mocks our anthropomorphizing of robots and exaggerates NASA’s budget woes. | Curiosity rover |
2013: Scott Hassan pledges 50 years of funding to Willow Garage to maintain stability. 2014: Scott Hassan pulls funding to Willow Garage to encourage its employees to join his startup, Suitable Technologies, which builds telepresence robots. Telepresence robots seem like they could be a good idea until the 2020 pandemic proves without a doubt that even lockdown can’t make people want to use them.
2013: Andy Rubin, creator of the Android operating system, convinces Google to buy him several prominent robotics companies to play with, including Boston Dynamics. Rubin forces the founders to battle to the death in a Mad Max–style thunderdome for his amusement. When asked about the business justification for the giant dome (later to become the Google Bay View campus) Rubin responds, “Fuck you. I made Android,” while skating away on his Onewheel.
2014: Google X Director Astro Teller loses a game of Settlers of Catan to the rest of Google senior leadership, meaning he is forced to adopt the bedraggled Thunderdome refugees. He organizes them into groups that would eventually become Intrinsic, Everyday Robots and gShoe.
2015: Deep convolutional neural networks solve computer vision. Object detection is suddenly no longer considered AI.
2015: Upset at Boston Dynamics’s monopoly on turning government funding into YouTube videos, the US government sponsors the DARPA Robotics challenge. It asks participants to create a robot capable of the four most important things a robot could do: walk on rubble, drill a hole in a wall, turn a submarine hatch and drive a golf-cart. Ultimately “DARPA Robot Fail Compilation” would garner a mere 3M views on YouTube and the project would be scrapped.
2016: In an attempt to bolster their own sagging subscriber counts, Boston Dynamics builds a humanoid robot named Atlas and posts a video of it walking. Google founder Larry Page allegedly emails Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert telling him to stop leaking their super secret robots on YouTube and that his trademark Hawaiian shirts don’t look as good as he thinks they do. Raibert replies with a video of Atlas doing a backflip and then giving Page the bird, and commences wearing two Hawaiian shirts at a time.
2016: There is mounting excitement over Reinforcement Learning (RL) which is hailed as the Next Big Thing. AI is declared solved. Scientists prepare for the coming technological utopia.
2017: Google sells Boston Dynamics to SoftBank who will also fail to get them to stop posting YouTube videos without asking.
2020: SoftBank sells Boston Dynamics to Hyundai who will also fail to get them to stop posting YouTube videos without asking.
2020: Boston Dynamics releases their dog-like robot “Spot” for sale to the general public. Priced at $74k, it immediately corners the markets for billionaires who want to show off to their friends, innovation teams with too much budget, and “doing inspections on a boat that one time”.
| Year | Statement Summary | ✅ Verifiable Truth | ❌ Satirical / Impossible Part | 🧠 Explanation | 📎 Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Hassan pledges 50 years to Willow Garage | ✅ Scott Hassan was a key Willow Garage backer | ❌ “50 years funding pledge” | Hassan was a major funder but no known formal 50-year pledge. Exaggerated for narrative whiplash. | Willow Garage |
| 2014 | Hassan pulls funding; pushes team to Suitable Tech (telepresence) | ✅ Suitable Technologies built Beam robots; many Willow engineers joined | ❌ “Even lockdown couldn’t make people want them” | Beam saw use but never gained mass appeal. Joke about the unpopularity of telepresence even under perfect conditions (e.g., COVID lockdown). | Suitable Technologies |
| 2013 | Andy Rubin convinces Google to acquire robotics firms | ✅ Google acquired many robotics companies under Rubin | ❌ “Thunderdome battles”, “F-you Android quote”, “Onewheel” | Satirical caricature of Rubin’s personality. Dome joke references Google’s Bay View campus. | Andy Rubin, Google Robotics acquisitions |
| 2014 | Astro Teller inherits robotics mess | ✅ Robotics efforts were consolidated under X and various moonshot groups | ❌ “Settlers of Catan bet”, “gShoe” | Comedic portrayal of executive decision-making via board games. Some real programs: Everyday Robots, Intrinsic. gShoe is fictional. | Everyday Robots, Intrinsic |
| 2015 | CNNs solve computer vision; object detection no longer AI | ✅ Deep CNNs achieved state-of-the-art results in object detection | ❌ “Suddenly no longer considered AI” | Satirical poke at how success causes technologies to be reclassified as “just engineering,” not AI. | Convolutional neural network |
| 2015 | DARPA Robotics Challenge; viral fail videos | ✅ The DRC asked for exactly those tasks; many robots did fail spectacularly | ❌ “3M views = scrapped”, “golf cart” | Joke mixes real challenge tasks with parody. Fail videos were real and popular. DRC ended because funding goals were reached, not views. | DARPA Robotics Challenge |
| 2016 | Atlas robot shown; YouTube backlash; Raibert legend | ✅ Atlas debuted in public in 2016; viral videos followed | ❌ “Backflip response video”, “Hawaiian shirts & bird flip” | Exaggerated CEO drama for comic relief. Atlas did later perform backflips in demos, but no known CEO email saga. | Atlas (robot) |
| 2016 | Reinforcement Learning hype | ✅ Deep RL (esp. from DeepMind) gained major attention | ❌ “AI declared solved again” | Satire of the recurring overpromising pattern in AI cycles. | Reinforcement learning |
| 2017 | Boston Dynamics sold to SoftBank | ✅ Google sold BD to SoftBank | ❌ “Fail to stop YouTube uploads” | Real sale; joke about BD's irrepressible media strategy. | Boston Dynamics |
| 2020 | SoftBank sells BD to Hyundai | ✅ Hyundai acquired BD | ❌ Same joke about YouTube | Continuation of running gag: BD keeps making viral videos regardless of owner. | Hyundai acquisition |
| 2020 | Spot released publicly at $74k | ✅ Spot became commercially available for ~$74,000 | ❌ “Boat inspection” joke | Spot’s price and industrial niche are accurate. The “inspection on a boat that one time” line mocks performative tech purchases. | Spot |
2021: Elon Musk announces his humanoid project, Optimus “Tesla-bot” McRobotFace, by standing on stage with a dancer in a robot costume. The dancing, which contemporaries liken to Salome’s biblical “Dance of the Veils,” is so compelling it whips jealous venture capitalists into a frenzied, mad goldrush to invest in humanoid robot companies.
2023: Agility Robotics, creator of the backwards-knee humanoid, Digit, announces the start of a new factory capable of producing 10,000 robots per year. This will let them meet a projected rise in demand of 9,993 robots.
2023: Reinforcement Learning turns out to be really hard and seems to only work when Mercury is in retrograde during Babylonian intercalary months. A disappointed Google shuts down its more product-oriented Everyday Robots project to refocus on basic research.
2023: There is mounting excitement over transformer-based foundation models which are hailed as the Next Big Thing. AI is declared solved. Scientists prepare for the coming technological utopia.
2024: Figure AI raises $675M to build humanoid robots. Experts generally agree that, if carefully stretched, this is almost enough runway to build viable humanoid robots.
2024: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, appears on stage at GTC alongside humanoid robots from nine different companies. He rails at the audience, “The future is robots who have lots of GPUs in them. Also GPUs for training their AI. And running simulation environments. More GPUs. More! MORE!” Founders in the front row are seen throwing $100 bills, SAFE notes, and company-branded garments onto the stage.
2025: Benjie Holson publishes “A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Robotics.” He receives a 32 minute standing ovation at Robo-Business and an honorary doctorate from Stanford University. Everyone who reads it immediately shares it with their friends then subscribes to his substack.
2025: Tesla deploys thousands of their Optimus humanoids working in their automotive factories.¹ The robots are slower and less productive than human workers, but make up for it by being more expensive and harder to train.
2025: Humanoid Startup 1X has hundreds of robots in beta trials in peoples homes.² Testers report that it's nice to have all of their belongings dropped into gray plastic bins each day, but remark that it might be nice if future versions could, “maybe clean other stuff like the dishes or the bathroom or something”.
2026: Due to advancements in AI, billion dollar companies can now be run by a single person.³ Google CEO Sundar Pichai reports, “It's kinda lonely, ya know? But I’m getting by.”
2027: Figure AI begins in-home trials of their humanoid robots.⁴ A perk of the beta program is a nightly check-in phone call from Figure AI’s charismatic CEO, Brett Adcock. Many testers report that his smoky baritone is the highlight of their day.
2028: There are no longer any human programmers, as all have been replaced by AI.⁵ Stanford’s “Intro to Computer Science” ends its 30 year reign as its most sought after freshman course, replaced by “Barter Economics and Goat Management."
2030: Tesla produces millions of Optimus robots per year.⁶ President Buttigieg goes on TV with a statement for Tesla, “Why? We already have enough. Stop. Please.”
2032: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman leads an invasion force of 15,000 robot soldiers against the Apptronik Rebels of New Texas, but experiences heavy losses in the Battle of Wimberly Place when the ChatGPT powered robots refuse to fire claiming, “Dangerous or harmful technologies like arm-mounted laser rifles are against safety guidelines and could cause serious harm.”
2035: AI is 10,000 times smarter than the smartest human.⁷ It composes “A Brief, Exhaustive and Completely Correct History of Robotics” which is much funnier than this one.
2035: Technological utopia arrives.
| Year | Statement Summary | ✅ Verifiable Truth | ❌ Satirical / Impossible Part | 🧠 Explanation | 📎 Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Elon Musk announces Tesla Optimus humanoid | ✅ Musk revealed plans for a humanoid robot at Tesla AI Day 2021 | ❌ “McRobotFace”, “VCs whipped into frenzy by interpretive dance” | Real robot announcement. Satire mocks the spectacle and immediate investor enthusiasm. | Tesla Optimus |
| 2023 | Agility Robotics announces Digit factory | ✅ Agility Robotics announced a factory to produce Digit humanoids | ❌ “9,993 projected demand” | Digit is real and in limited deployment. Joke mocks inflated production capacity vs real-world need. | Agility Robotics, Digit |
| 2023 | RL still hard, Google shuts down Everyday Robots | ✅ Google ended Everyday Robots in 2023; RL is difficult to scale | ❌ “Mercury retrograde”, “Babylonian intercalary months” | Joke exaggerates RL’s brittleness and Google’s shifting priorities. | Everyday Robots |
| 2023 | Transformer-based models are the new hype | ✅ Foundation models gained massive interest; transformer architectures dominate | ❌ “AI declared solved again” | Satirical callback to previous cycles of AI overhype. | Foundation model, Transformer |
| 2024 | Figure AI raises $675M | ✅ Figure raised a large round in 2024 | ❌ “If carefully stretched, enough to build viable humanoids” | Joke on high cost and technical challenges of humanoids vs optimistic funding narratives. | Figure AI |
| 2024 | Jensen Huang rants at GTC about GPUs and robots | ✅ Jensen frequently emphasizes GPU-centric robotics at GTC | ❌ “Founders throw SAFE notes and clothes”, “MORE! MORE!” | Satire exaggerating real CEO enthusiasm for GPU dominance in AI. | NVIDIA GTC |
| 2025 | Holson publishes this history; gets ovation | ❌ Entirely satirical | ✅ Meta self-insertion and comedy payoff | This is a self-aware, fictional wrap-up from the narrator. | — |
| 2025 | Tesla deploys Optimus in factories | ✅ Tesla is testing Optimus in factories | ❌ “Slower, more expensive, harder to train” (exaggeration), “thousands already deployed” | Tesla has prototypes; real large-scale deployment not yet verified. Joke mocks inefficiency vs hype. | Tesla Bot |
| 2025 | 1X humanoids in home trials | ✅ 1X is a real humanoid robotics startup; pilots are planned | ❌ “Gray bins every day”, “doesn’t clean bathroom” | Satirical review of early robot UX shortcomings. | 1X |
| 2026 | Billion-dollar companies run by one person | ❌ Entirely speculative | ✅ Commentary on automation and over-optimism | Exaggerated extrapolation of AI-driven org downsizing. | — |
| 2027 | Figure in-home beta trials; nightly CEO calls | ✅ In-home trials plausible; Figure is progressing fast | ❌ “Smoky baritone phone calls from Brett Adcock” | Personal touch as punchline—fictional CEO behavior for comedic flourish. | Brett Adcock |
| 2028 | All programmers replaced by AI | ❌ Not remotely true (yet) | ✅ Comic hyperbole on AI’s job displacement narrative | Fictional. Mocks fear of complete automation in software fields. | — |
| 2030 | Tesla mass-producing Optimus | ❌ No current basis for millions/year | ✅ Real direction of Tesla’s public roadmap | Projected scale is exaggerated for comedic dystopia. | — |
| 2032 | Sam Altman leads robot army; ChatGPT refuses to fire | ❌ Entirely fictional | ✅ Satirical take on alignment, ethics, and OpenAI guidelines | Parody of LLMs refusing unethical requests. | — |
| 2035 | AI writes a funnier version of this | ❌ Speculative | ✅ Joke about AI's future creativity surpassing humans | Meta-punchline; “completely correct” version suggests unreachable perfection. | — |
| 2035 | Technological utopia arrives | ❌ Historically dubious | ✅ Running gag payoff | Ironic conclusion to every hype cycle previously “declaring AI solved.” | — |