Workers had to stop a humanoid dancing robot after it ran amok in a California restaurant

When we think about the current threats of new technologies, we often think of something like the recent discussions between Anthropic and the Pentagon about how AI can be used in the military. It’s scary to think about – how long will it be before a nuclear weapon is detonated without human intervention?

We’ve been spending so much time thinking about these potential disasters that we haven’t prepared for the most imminent danger in our midst: dancing robots.

A dancing robot at the Haidilao hot pot restaurant in Cupertino, California, exploded violently, came very close to the table, and began smashing plates and sending dishes and chopsticks everywhere, prompting staff at the restaurant to intervene, according to a video posted on Chinese social media site Xiaohongshu by user Meooow.

From what we can see in the video, at least three workers struggled to stop the robot as it circled its arms. Another Haidilao worker can be seen looking at his phone, perhaps trying to change something in the app that controls the robot. The robot – which appears to be the AgiBot X2 robot, which was unveiled at the CES conference in January – may have a killing machine, but the crew may not have known how to use it.

If you are not familiar with hot pot, you should know that, as its name suggests, it involves hot pots of soup. No one likes spilled food, but if a robot were to knock over bowls of bone broth, it wouldn’t be a culinary disaster, it might burn someone badly. Not to mention any potential damage from automaton now-moshing.

When the Killers sang “Are we human or are we dancers,” we didn’t realize they were asking us to participate in the upcoming robot wars.

Haidilao confirmed the machine’s contraption in a statement sent to NBC News, but denied that the robot was “malfunctioning or out of control.”

“In this case, the robot was brought closer to the dining table at the request of the guest, which is not its normal operating mode,” the Chinese hot pot restaurant chain said in a statement to NBC. “The limited space affected its movement during operation.”

AgiBot did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

Haidilao has experimented with a “smart restaurant” in Beijing, using robot servers and broth mixing machines. It seems that this restaurant in Haidilao was already using the robot for entertainment purposes, but things got out of hand when it danced too close to customers.

Many startups are working to bring robots to the food service industry, such as Shin Starr, which is working to make kitchens fully autonomous. Pudu Robotics’ BellaBot, a cute, cat-like robot, can guide customers to their seats and bring out their food when they’re done.

Maybe that’s safer than humanoid robots, for now at least – BellaBot has no limbs.