Robots are great, but we need to have a serious conversation about their purpose. Robots doing the dishes is awesome; robots making art sucks. Robots driving trucks and trains are super useful, but robots running a 100-meter relay are utterly painful to watch.

At least, that’s my takeaway after seeing footage from the first (and hopefully last) Humanoid Robot Games that took place last week in Beijing. Take the robo-runner Unitree, for example, which won the gold medal in the 1500-meter race, posting a time of 6 minutes and 34 seconds. The current world record for the 1500-meter race is 3 minutes and 26 seconds.

So, sorry, but I’m not impressed.

The robots competed in events ranging from track and field to football, though not without the help of their meat-bag controllers. Yeah, the robots can’t run on their own, or really do much of anything on their own, so as they run, a person with a controller has to jog behind them to make sure they keep a straight line and don’t run off the track.

Which, in my humble opinion, is a pretty great metaphor for the current state of everything. 

Unitree wins the gold medal for the 1500m run at the World Humanoid Robot Games, setting a world record time of 6 minutes and 34 seconds.

The current men's world record is 3:26. pic.twitter.com/q2VThR9n5E

— The Humanoid Hub (@TheHumanoidHub) August 15, 2025