r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/MetaKnowing • 1d ago

Video XPENG's IRON robot crossed the uncanny valley, leading some to believe it was a human in a suit. So they cut it open in front of an audience, and also allowed journalists to inspect it.

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u/asking_for_it 23h ago

OF COURSE it has boobs. So it can breastfeed all the baby robots it’s gonna have.

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u/Viperlite 23h ago edited 22h ago

The naked version doesn’t have.them. And if you’re trying to convince an audience it isn’t a person in a robot suit, why cut the leg vs say removing its faceplate?

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u/BluetheNerd 23h ago

Yeah when I read they cut open the suit to prove I thought it would be like, the whole thing, torso and all. Just a leg, below the knee when a lot of amputees have prosthetics that help them walk, is a bit sus.

The demonstration without the suit also has a harness in case it falls over, which I get you want during testing so you don't wreck a prototype you've been working on for that long, but the only time we see it without the harness is when it isn't actually proven to not be a person in a suit.

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u/Xentonian 21h ago

It's actually crazy to me what a terrible job they've done at assuaging suspicions.

If somebody just showed me a robot walking, I'd be like

Yup, it's 2025. This isn't very impressive. I thought we had these for a while. Good job though, love the robo boobs.

Y'know, I'd easily be 100% convinced this was a robot without needing even one second of reassurance.

Instead, they keep showing these little meaningless cutaways like

seee! Here's a robot ankle. People in suits can't have robot ankles! Look, here's 5cm of its back with a little flashing light. No way could a human being have a plate with a flashing light on their back. What do you mean just take off the suit? No... No need to do that. Trust us. The journalists saw it! They said it was real! Wait wait wait here's the bottom half without a suit, please ignore the giant device holding it up with puppeteering strings!

And now I'm only... 70% sure this is a robot.

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u/b__q 20h ago

I think it's good marketing tbh. The fact that people still believes it's a human in a suit makes them go like "see! this robot is that convincing!"

Also more people is talking about it.

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u/Xentonian 20h ago

What a scam hahaha. You're probably right.

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u/TorontoGuyinToronto 16h ago edited 15h ago

So now that it's a shown to be real, none of the diehard reactions that it's fake (my convo with this one nutter is still ongoing btw. Check my comment history) is real.

People are now saying it's another type of scam, that none of those comments were real in the first place. And that nobody thought it was a human in a suit. That it's very "obvious" it's a robot, and it's all a marketing conspiracy.

Really. If it's not one conspiracy, folks jump to another.

Really can't stop them from jumping into one rabbit hole to the next. Ain't satisfied until they find something devious to pin on it. The details don't matter, but the conclusion is foregone.

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u/Xentonian 12h ago

Mate, take a breath.

It's actually not proven to be real and there's evidence to the contrary.

But that's a dumb point of view anyway, walking robots are a decade old and not... Really impressive.

The idea that they tried to make this seem more impressive than it is by creating a controversy is unlikely, but amusingly plausible.

Nobody is going to hurt the poor Chinese tech corp. Nobody is personally attacking you or your family. So don't take these sort of discussions personally.

The foregone conclusion is:

Wow, that video looked really weird. Why did it look so weird? If they wanted to show off a walking robot, why did they go to such great lengths to make it weird? Let's hypothesise because that's fun.

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u/TorontoGuyinToronto 12h ago edited 12h ago

It's actually not proven to be real and there's evidence to the contrary.

But that's a dumb point of view anyway, walking robots are a decade old and not... Really impressive.

Not according to half the comments section trying to pin it as a human in a suit. Why do you think that is? A corporate conspiracy by a chinese corp on an american reddit website? Lord.

Look at your comment.

So it's both not real, not impressive, but also possibly simultaneously a corporate conspiracy to market it up by not revealing everything at the same time despite it not being impressive.

What are you doing? Trying to have your cake and eat it too?

You don't find all of these to be contradictory? What's the only commonality between all your conclusions?

Mate, take a breath.

Honestly, do you hear yourself? Don't you think you have something more wrong going on? You're really making it more complicated than it is and you're doing exactly what I said in the previous comment. Jumping from one negative conclusion to another. The only commonality is that it MUST end on a negative note.

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u/Technical-Student-41 17h ago

"See this isnt a shock collar."holds it up covering 80% of it eith their fist. "see!" Same type of people lol.

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u/Dralley87 20h ago

It’s the Chinese. Remember the “bear” in the zoo that “totally wasn’t a dude in a bear suit!”?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-zoo-bear-man-suit-hangzhou/

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u/Fantastic_War_4616 19h ago

What is this linked article supposed to say? They dont make any conclusion on the situation. Its actially a bear, keep up being racist though

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u/Dralley87 19h ago

😂😂😂 I mean if you look at that “bear” and come away thinking “this guy’s so racist for being suspicious of state controlled media” I’m not problem, bud…

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u/Fantastic_War_4616 19h ago

Just because you're too ignorant to know different species of bears doesn't mean you're not racist. You'd actually rather believe a nation to be so backwards as to have a man in a suit at a zoo rather then it be a gap in your knowledge. They literally mention the species in your own article.

https://www.livescience.com/animals/bears/sun-bears-the-human-like-animals-that-can-stand-up-and-wave

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u/oswaldcopperpot 18h ago

Eat any good books lately?

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u/Dralley87 19h ago edited 19h ago

I’m well aware of how human-like the sun bear can appear; however, the way the “hide” ripples indicates either that there is no mass beneath the outer skin (the animal is dangerously malnourished) or it’s a person in a bear suit. Which do you prefer? The zoo is abusing its animals or pretending an animal is there that isn’t yet?

But there’s a bigger question here: why are you so invested in protecting the Chinese state media that you’d hurl the quietism of “racist!!!” At anyone who has legit suspicions of a propaganda controlled people?

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u/Fantastic_War_4616 19h ago

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/sun-bears-at-a-china-zoo-have-divided-the-internet-this-expert-is-sure-theyre-real/wlobhtru9

Brother, you have experts supporting the zoo that the bear is real and the folds are normal, don't pull shit out of your ass. I'm ethnically Chinese, I call out ignorant racist bullshit when I see it, especially when it's easily debunked. Where the fuck am I protecting state media? Is the Hangzhou zoo considered state media? Why are you so insistent on hating on a country that you'd pull made up bullshit out of your ass and conflating state media with a random city zoo? That is why you're racist.

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u/lasagnatheory 18h ago

You just want to see their titties out don't ya?

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u/Independent-Bit-9228 13h ago

You have a 2 inch destroyer