The Janky Time Machine’s navigation system—which I’m pretty sure is just a Magic 8-Ball duct-taped to the dashboard—landed me on a suburban street corner somewhere past “current events” but before “flying cars, probably.” It’s October 31st, which the chronometer knows because even broken temporal technology can read a calendar.
Here’s what I wasn’t expecting: a neighborhood street absolutely packed with robots in costumes, bumping into each other like a very expensive game of bumper cars, while the actual houses are dark and quiet. Found one of these SpookyBot1 costume packages torn open on someone’s lawn, next to a charging station.
Apparently we’ve reached the point where nobody actually goes trick-or-treating anymore. Not the parents walking their kids around. Not the homeowners answering doors. The robots do both—handing out candy and collecting it, choreographed by teleoperators in call centers halfway around the world who are probably wondering why Americans are so weird about this particular day in October.
Watched two Neo units get into what I can only describe as a very polite standoff over a “TAKE ONE” bowl. Their operators—one in Manila, one in Bangalore, based on the accent fragments I could hear through the external speakers—spent three minutes negotiating in broken English while a dozen other robots queued up behind them. One was dressed as a ghost. One had a pumpkin head. All of them waiting patiently in a line that would make a British person weep with pride.
The actual kids? Inside, watching TikTok compilations of the night’s “best robot interactions.” Parents are doing the same, except they’re also monitoring their home’s candy distribution metrics on an app. Apparently, there’s a neighborhood leaderboard. One house has a robot butler doing elaborate dances between candy handouts. It’s got 47,000 views.
The Janky Time Machine started leaking temporal coolant on someone’s driveway, which seemed appropriate given that I’m watching the past, present, and future of human interaction all collapse into a weird remote-controlled pantomime. A SpookyBot costume unit rolled over to investigate—its operator probably wondering if the mysterious smoking vehicle was part of the holiday decorations.
So we finally figured out how to remove all the inconvenient parts of Halloween: the weather, the walking, the small talk with neighbors, the kids hopped up on sugar, the teenagers without costumes just grabbing handfuls. Just pure, optimized, algorithm-friendly content generation, executed by machines and watched from couches.
The SpookyBot in front of me just bumped into a fire hydrant for the third time. Its operator is clearly having a night. Somewhere, a parent is probably posting that clip with laughing emojis.
Makes you wonder what we’ll outsource next. Birthday parties? Funerals? First dates? Or have we already started and just haven’t noticed the package on the lawn yet?
The Janky Time Machine is making a noise it definitely shouldn’t make. Pretty sure I need to leave before someone’s bot tries to give me candy.
ICYMI - X1 Neo, a humanoid robot was released this week, available to rent/purchase in the real world. The catch is that it’s not fully autonomous, and most tasks will require teleoperation. MKBHD does a good breakdown of it on YouTube.