We Met NEO, the Viral Humanoid Robot + HatGPT

Hard Fork

The New York Times

Technology

4.5 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

People have been waiting for a robot to do their chores since they watched “The Jetsons.” Can the company behind NEO finally make it happen?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Casey, did you hear about the Waymo Kit Kat incident?
0:04.0	I did. A very sad story, unfortunately.
0:06.5	Yes. So Waymo in San Francisco hit and killed a bodega cat in the Mission District named Kit Kat.
0:16.6	Named Kit Kat, of course. And this was a beloved cat in the community.
0:20.2	This was a gray tabby,
0:21.6	was the store mascot and pet of the owner at a bodega on 16th Street. And yeah, this was a very
0:30.7	sad incident. There's now actually a Remember Kit Kat rally that's being held by a district
0:36.0	supervisor. So Kit Kat is in our prayers. Yeah. Now, you had an
0:40.6	interesting tweet about this. I'll just read this here. You said, it's Kit Kat's fault. Get out of
0:45.4	the damn road when there's a Waymo nearby. Do you want to explain that? That was not me.
0:50.0	You didn't write that? I did not write that. Oh. Sorry. I'm pro Kidat. I'm more of a dog guy, but, you know, cats deserve to live too. I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at the New York Times. I'm Casey Noon from Platformer. And this is Hard Fork. This week, the humanoid robot that has the internet a buzz.
1:15.2	We'll talk to 1X CEO, Burt Burnit, about Neo, and then put it to work.
1:17.5	And then, a round of hat, GPT. Okay, see, we got a big first on Hard Fork this week, our first humanoid robot guest.
1:33.8	Yes, and I'm thrilled about this.
1:35.4	You know, we tried to book a humanoid robot for the Hard Fork live show.
1:38.2	We could not get it to happen, but fast forward a few months.
1:41.1	And finally, there is a robot that's willing to come on the show, Kevin.
1:43.7	Yes, and this robot is sort of having a moment right now. It's fair to say. This is the Neo robot.
1:48.6	It's made by a company called OneX. And Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal, tech columnist and friend of the pod, did a great video about Neo last week that went viral and got lots of pickup from lots of places, and people
2:02.1	were sort of buzzing about this new human-like robot.
2:05.8	Yeah, and on one hand, you have people telling every joke you can imagine, people who are
2:10.9	worried about the privacy implications of having this kind of surveillance machine in the house
	...

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