Bots on the ground: China leads humanoid race

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1:08The Economist

1:15Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor.

1:24Today on the show, will the meta ruling change teen social media use? And a famous English language bookshop in Paris?

1:40But first...

1:55This week, the World Humanoid Robot Games took place in Beijing. These are like the Olympic Games, but instead of athletes, you have robots competing. Don Wineland is our China Business and Finance Editor. There were some pretty impressive feats during these games. We had robots powerlifting, boxing, playing football, and of course, running.

2:25At one of these races, a humanoid called Tiangong Ultra beat Usain Bolt's 100-meter sprint record, so it was able to do this in 9.39 seconds. It ended up crashing into a wall afterwards. Other robots crashed and fell. One of them caught fire. But one thing that these Olympic Games for robots demonstrates is that China is really at the forefront of the humanoid robotics industry. Companies in the country will probably sell around 50 ,000 of them this year. That's triple the figure of last year. But it's also worth keeping in mind that these are very expensive machines that really can't do a whole lot at this point.

3:14This technology still has a long way to go before we get robots cleaning our dishes and cooking dinner for us. Don, explain to me what's so hard about developing a useful humanoid robot. When you think about AI, we can teach chatbots how to communicate with us by scanning lots of digital texts and reading the internet and things like that. It's much more complicated when it comes to robots. Think about picking up a glass of water. You know not to squeeze a glass hard enough to make it shatter in your hand. You know how water moves around when you pick it up. These are all things you do without thinking about it.

3:56Humanoid robots need to be trained to understand all these things. They need to be able to carry out tasks safely. It's thought that we might need to collect something like 100 million hours of data from the real world in order to train robots. That's more than 11 ,000 years of data. So suffice it to say that we are really far away from collecting enough data to make humanoid robots smart. We're definitely not going to wait 11 ,000 years for these kind of humanoids. So how are robot makers planning to bridge that gap? There are a couple different ways to do this. What's generally considered to be the highest quality data is often referred to as real-time machine data.

4:43So what you need to get this kind of data is you need a humanoid with you, and you need to make it move around. Because when it moves around, it records its movements, and that data can be used in other robots. Another type of data is called egocentric data. You don't need a robot with you to do this. What people do to record egocentric data is they put on headsets, and they put on gloves, sometimes suits, and boots that have sensors in them. and they move around. This also records movement and that can be applied to robotic movement as well. China's quickly becoming the front runner in real machine data that is acquired through these places called robot training centers.

5:28I've been trying for months to get into one of these places. No one would let me in. Finally, a colleague and I got into one in Wuhan. This place is called the Hubei Humanoid Innovation Center. So what was it like, Don? When you pull up, it just looks like many of the big tech centers that are built in virtually every big city in China. When you walk in, suddenly you are in kind of a different world. The first thing I saw was a young man pouring coffee. And actually, he wasn't pouring coffee. was the robot next to him that was pouring coffee. But he was making the hand gestures. So the robot is moving and it's learning to pour coffee.

6:12But this, of course, was just one of the many stations within this center. So if you take a few steps, you're suddenly in a small room that is designed to look like a grocery store. Then you're in a pharmacy. Then you're in a factory with a factory line in front of you. And at each station, you have one of these robot-human duos with the human training the robot how to do things, like stalking a shelf or picking up a box that has fallen on the ground or something like that. And is it working? You say China's the frontrunner. Are we actually getting closer to something that's a useful droid? China is really good at scaling things up.

6:52So if we were just looking at how well it's done in creating these training centers, it's doing very, very well. It's already built 53 of them, and it has 34 more that are being planned. The one that I went to could fit about 100 humanoids, but there's one being built in Shanghai right now that can fit 1 ,000 humanoids. We identified a city not far from Shanghai that's actually building six of these things, and it's not a big city. So in terms of creating the space and the infrastructure to do this type of training, it's doing very well. There's another side of this, which is the cost. And it's very, very expensive to run these centers.

7:32So first of all, a humanoid can cost up to$15 ,000 a piece. Then you need this training process. This costs anywhere from 500 to 700 yuan per hour. So when you start thinking about the need to get 100 million hours of training data for a useful robot to finally come into existence, you're really looking at incredible costs. So it's a very labor-intensive process. Are there other ways to get that data? So I mentioned egocentric data, getting people to put on headsets and gloves and pretend like they're working or doing real work and recording their movements. This is also taking place at a pretty wide scale in China right now.

8:21This e-commerce company called JD.com said that it's recruiting 100 ,000 of its own staff and 500 ,000 people outside of its company to put on this type of gear and record their movements. So you can see that there are companies in China that are really interested in finding other ways of collecting data. If JD is successful in this operation over the next two years, it may be able to collect 10 million hours of real world data. So that would be quite an achievement. It sounds nevertheless very slow, very expensive, with not brilliant results. Don, you said that China will sell 50 ,000 of these robots this year, but they're not very useful.

9:05Who's buying them? This is one of the key questions about the humanoid robotics industry in China. A lot of these will go to these training centers. In fact, the training centers are a key source of demand for the robots. But think about this. This is an industry that is creating robots that can't do a whole lot. And the only reason why they are being bought and sold is because there's a promise of better robots in the future. That is what's driving this industry forward right now. Don, what's the ultimate endgame here then? What are we going to use these droids for? If you want someone that can clean your house 24 hours a day and serve you food and take care of your cat or dog, we can imagine that at some point in the future, I think it's pretty far off.

9:59We might have humanoids to do that type of thing. But we have to think about this moment like maybe thinking about smartphones in the mid-2000s. You know, if somebody asked you, do you want a small TV that goes in your pocket in 1995? You might say no, right? So I guess at this point, it requires a little bit of imagination to see where this industry is going. Don, thank you very much. Thank you.

10:40Home is for relaxing, whether you're hosting friends for dinner or enjoying a quiet afternoon by yourself with a tasty treat. But it's hard to relax when a couple of flying insects always seem to show up uninvited. Then those one or two fruit flies suddenly become hundreds, and that can make it even harder to relax. Next thing you know, you're spending time swatting them away. Thankfully, the Zeevo Flying Insect Trap takes care of flying insects for you. Just plug it in and it gets to work 24-7. Its specifically designed blue and UV light attracts flying insects like houseflies, fruit flies, and gnats, trapping them on a sticky backing without any odors or mess.

11:17The Zivo Trap also features a sleek curb design that keeps captured bugs out of sight, so it blends seamlessly into your home. When the cartridge is full, you just grab the no-mess tab, throw it in the trash, pop in a new cartridge, and then you're done. It's quick, easy, and you never have to touch a single bug. Plug in a Zivo flying insect trap so you can work smarter, not harder, and enjoy your time at home with 24-7 bug protection.

11:49Before we go on, I want to tell you about the latest episode of The Economist Insider, our video series, which, as the name suggests, takes you inside our newsroom. When federal immigration agents killed Renee Good and Alex Priti in Minneapolis earlier this year, many Americans were horrified. Donald Trump responded by firing the head of Border Patrol and his Homeland Security advisor. Their replacements have tried to keep mass deportation out of the headlines, but they're very much continuing the policy. This week on Insider, Edward Carr, our deputy editor, gathers a panel of our top journalists to scrutinize Trump's immigration policies and asks how they will change America.

12:33And on Checks and Balance, our weekly US podcast out later today, we'll be talking specifically about the border wall. If you're a digital subscriber, Insider and Checks and Balance are already part of your subscription. If you're listening free, you can watch extended clips of Insider via the link I've in the show notes.

13:02Outside a courthouse in California, parents spoke of their grief over how they say their lives had been ripped apart by the actions of Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram. I don't know how they live with themselves. They have children. They don't allow their children to be on social media. I don't know how Mark Zuckerberg can live with himself knowing that his hands are bloody. With death and harm, it needs to stop. 29 states teamed up to take on the social media colossus, claiming both that the platform harms children and that the company knew the damaging effects. But the trial lasted just five days.

13:46It was finished even before Meta's boss Mark Zuckerberg took to the stand. On Wednesday, it reached a$17 billion settlement, a landmark moment that could affect a swathe of other tech firms.

14:01Alice Fulwood:2026 has been a pretty miserable year for Meta in court. Alice Fullwood hosts our Money Talks podcast and is The Economist's US business editor. It lost a couple of small but very high-profile cases, but all of those cases paled in comparison to the trial that had begun on August 18th. This was brought by a consortium of 29 states. They were seeking up to$200 billion in damages, and they were alleging that Meta perpetuated harm against young people and that it knew it. Now, a settlement has been reached. And what's in that settlement? There are basically sort of two main parts of the settlement.

14:46Alice Fulwood:One is financial damages. So Meta has agreed to pay at least$12 billion and as much as$17 billion in damages over the next 10 years. And it's also agreed to various ways in which it will now restrict how teens and young people use Facebook and Instagram in the States. So this includes new processes to pinpoint the age of all users. It's got to use more data and more markers to try and assess how old people are. And for everyone that thinks of under 18, there are going to be restrictions on how much time and how they use the platform. So the total time they can spend across both of Meta's apps, Facebook and Instagram, will be capped at two hours a day.

15:26Alice Fulwood:There'll be a blackout period from midnight to 6am. The company is not allowed to send notifications to these users from 10pm to 7am, nor during school hours. So those are restrictions on from a time perspective. And then there are also some softer restrictions about what teens see. So things like how many likes a post get will be hidden from them, things that could be used for social comparison. And they'll also have the option to switch from the algorithm-based feed to a 2010-style chronological feed, which will just show them photos in chronological order from accounts that they choose to follow or people that are their friends.

16:03Alice, how effective will any of that be with regard to teenagers?

16:07Alice Fulwood:You know, a lot of people are reporting the massive number from the settlement, $17 billion. Oh, this is one of the biggest corporate settlements ever. And they're getting a lot of comparisons to big tobacco. And my perception is that it's just not even in the order of magnitude of the big tobacco settlement. In the 90s, the tobacco companies were fined the total size of their market cap combined. It was a$200 billion settlement against all these companies, which was roughly the value of those companies. It was absolutely enormous. Meta is being fined. at maximum about 10 % of its revenue last year, about an eighth of the total amount of plans to spend on things like CapEx on data centers this year.

16:46Alice Fulwood:I think the more interesting question is these ways that Meta is going to have to change its platforms to make them potentially less addictive, less compulsive for teens. How effective will those be? And I actually think that some of the restrictions they've agreed to are pretty limiting. There'll only be the sort of window in the evening where teens might be able to get notifications. We'll have to see how effective their new age verification processes are. And most interesting, I think, is this option to switch the feed. We'll have to see how many teens opt into that 2010 style version of Instagram.

17:20What about the other social media companies that are also accused of these same problems with regards to teen privacy and social media addiction?

17:30Alice Fulwood:This settlement, I think you should think of it as essentially the template, the outline for how deals with other social media companies are going to be brokered. It includes a lot of trigger clauses. The fine, for example, the states will only be able to collect$12 billion unless they secure similar settlements against the other social media companies, at which point you bump up to that maximum$17 billion fine. So the states now have this incentive to go and make sure that they get similar settlements against all of these other platforms, TikTok, YouTube, Snap, etc. And a couple of the restrictions on social media will get a little bit tighter if there are settlements against other companies as well.

18:10Alice Fulwood:So the blackout period, for example, on Facebook and Instagram will run from 10pm to 7am rather than midnight to 6am if settlements are reached against other companies. So I think this is the shape of how these deals are going to look. There are probably going to be fines against the other companies. There are probably going to be these similar restrictions. the requirement to offer less addictive feeds. And the states are already getting to work on the other companies. So shortly after the settlement was announced, Pennsylvania's attorney general announced that it's suing Snapchat over the risks that its design poses to minors.

18:43Alice Fulwood:And you saw a pretty substantial slide in Snapchat price. It fell by about 8%. But this isn't the end of it, is it? This is just the US, of course. And a lot of countries are already looking at how teens are using social media. Yeah, I mean, this obviously is the biggest case, the biggest settlement that Meta has brokered with anyone yet. That said, it really is just the tip of the iceberg. So you see last year, Australia obviously banned young people from social media and sort of similar laws have been considered in France, although they are not going ahead at the moment. So internationally, certainly you're going to see sort of similar movements.

19:19Alice Fulwood:But even in the US, like everything is not settled yet. There are still some states who are pursuing individual cases or trying to broker other settlements with Meta. And then you have all of the other kinds of lawsuits that have been filed against the company. So you have thousands of personal injury lawsuits have been filed, similar to the one in California. And you have more than a thousand school districts who have also sued the firm. And early trials for those kinds of cases are probably going to go ahead in February next year. So not quite a tobacco moment, but a big deal. Yeah, I think this analogy with big tobacco is very appealing in that you can see a lot of similarities.

20:01Alice Fulwood:It's a potentially addictive product that is supposed to perpetuate harm to users. And the way the lawsuits have been constructed to go after social media companies have been about this question of how much did they know? Did they know that the way that they designed these platforms were causing their users to have ill effects? Maybe they were addictive, maybe they were causing mental health issues, etc. etc. That construction is sort of very similar to how the big tobacco cases were built. That said, one of the interesting things about the tobacco settlement is that it was enormous. It was considered to be sort of potentially sort of industry destroying at the time.

20:35Alice Fulwood:But actually, although smoking rates have declined substantially, the companies themselves have done very well. Altria, which is one of the biggest tobacco companies in the world, if you'd invested in Altria in 2000, so a couple years after the settlement, you would have made 36 times your money, whereas putting it in the S &P 500 would have just been about eight times. So after all the settlements and after all that stuff was in the rearview mirror, these companies have still done fantastically well. And I do think that there may be an analogy with Meta there as well, because it's still fantastically profitable.

21:09Alice Fulwood:Investors clearly don't think this is a very big deal. So potentially, it will be like big tobacco in that way. Alice, thank you very much. Thank you for having me, Rosie.

21:39The lore around Shakespeare and Company, a storied English-language bookshop on the left bank of the Seine in Paris, is fascinating.

21:50Alexandra Sewitch-Bass is The Economist's culture editor. Tourists think maybe Shakespeare wrote and lived there, or that Sylvia Plath founded it. The myth-telling is fascinating, and we often hear guides who are out front, in front of the bookshop, giving a completely imaginative version of the history. For example, that Sylvia Plath started this bookshop. Sylvia Whitman, the owner, has heard all the myths and theories. In fact, her father, a lover of stories, founded the shop 75 years ago this month under a different name, Le Misral. Now it is one of the most famous bookstores in the world. Two to three thousand people visit a day, about one million a year.