The Chaser Report - China's 2026 Robolympics

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

The Enhanced Games were fun, but thanks to robots and AI we can now watch the even-more-enhanced games! Charles and Dom recap the highs and lows of the recent Robotic Olympics that took place in China. Plus, an AI Craig.---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Chaser Report with Domit. No, yeah, that's right. Hello and welcome to the Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Do leave that in, Loughlin. That was excellent. Now, a couple of months ago, you might recall our episodes on the enhanced games

in which drug-fueled athletes went out and not really. It didn't really break records, I don't think. Weren't they beaten by a non-enhanced athlete? Anyway, forget that. That is old hat because, unfortunately, for all those involved, that just doesn't seem exciting anymore. Now that we have the World Humanoid Robot Games. Yes.

I don't know whether you've seen the footage on, like, there's tons of social media clips, and it was on the news the other night. Hosted, of course, in Beijing, China. Yes, and it's just all these robots sort of running around and... It's kind of both athletics meet and demolition derby. Yeah, and it's sort of slightly dystopian. Like, especially, did you see the opening ceremony, the clips from the opening ceremony?

Let's get into that after some ads. Just snuggle up tight with your robot companion with whom you've replaced your partner. And we'll, or is it just me? And we'll get into it. So lots of events, they, four or five days of this in Beijing, and the humanoid robots, the tasks included running fast, performing kung fu or dance moves, fighting in kickboxing. Kickboxing, that was great. And playing soccer or table tennis. There was even a tweezer usage washing and hanging laundry.

And as you know, this is the thing I most want robots to do. So that was slower than human speed. but nevertheless, it's an impressive category. What caught you all right, Charles? Well, the first one was the robot that managed to do the sprint properly actually beat Hussein Bolt. Yes, for the first time. Millis seconds.

So that was pretty good. Although, I must say, the way they ended the sprint was fucking hilarious because these robots don't know how to stop. Like, for some reason... You don't need to build that in. Yeah, I think it was. was just to make them quick enough, you give them all the stuff that

allows them to go forward, but none of the sort of all the monitors, because presumably there's a whole physics gravity thing going on, momentum thing going on to sort of try and stop a robot. So instead they just had a big piece of foam at the end of the track

and they just hurled into the and I don't know, I've set that as my wallpaper on my computer because it's a big phone. It's hilarious. It's just these things running. And see, even like when a human runs full pelt at a wall, there's always a sort of moment

of hesitation. These have no hesitation. They just literally run in and then they explode. They fall over backwards. And then all sparks fly. It's just, it's perfect. I love the iteration of this where, yes, we've got them fast in humans. That is amazing.

Oh, but it's burst into flames. I can't stop. Like, that's next year. That's not in this version of the development charge. But why do you want? No, I don't want that. I don't want things that just stop. You could watch the Olympics for that.

I want things that can't stop and then explode. That's so much more entertaining. I think it was a mistake. I think they should have had two categories. So there was a prize for the ones that went first. Then surely a demolition derby which one. Most violent. Which one's the last one standing?

And I think that's why. the kickboxing was so appealing as well, because I don't know about you. I'm not actually a huge fan of kickboxing. I find it violent, right? Isn't that the point? Yes. And I get all worried about the people involved. Let's not have gloves for the boxing. Let's instead use a harder part of the body that hurts more. Yes. And I don't like any of those contexts. I've never have. I've always thought, oh, that's just horrible. You'd get a headache and poor people involved. And I just, it sort of reminds me bullies at school and stuff like that. People who use violence

to resolve their issues. And look, I admit, you know, some people love all that stuff and, you know, good on them. Ultimate fighting championship and all that. Yeah. But the reason why the humanoid kickboxing was so appealing is you didn't have to worry about any of that. No, there's no

blood, no noses to break. And part of the reason is, because they were fucking shit. Kickboxing. Like, most of the kicks that they tried to kick to their opponent's head, missed their opponent's head. Yeah. So it was just, it was like watching two toddlers pretend to kickbox.

Or drunk adults. Yeah, or drunk adults. I'm just thinking that, Charles, imagine how good in the future robots will be at bullying. Like, I remember there was, there was a guy in, in my school, I can't remember why he did this, but there was a guy in my school who would literally just follow this other kid around. I can't remember what was special about his shoes. But I do remember this kid spent the entire day just going behind and going,

No shoes, no shoes, no shoes, no shoes. You could set a robot to do that, like, for the entire day. Yes. He's following a kid around and teases them about their shoes. Yes. And it would be that it's the social media equivalent of the robot boom, right? So you know how we got the internet and we thought, oh, this is going to be toys.com and pets.com. We're going to just buy shit off the internet and have really funny things.

And then it turned out that social media existed. Like somebody invented social media. And then it was used as a toy. for bullying. I think the same trend is going to happen. Like we've got, we're in the joyful stage where we go, oh, it's just fun and games and robots exploding. But, you know, there's going to be a killer app, literally a killer app invented like

social media for humanoid robots. And I think you're right. It's going to be the robot that you can program to go and psychologically destroy your enemy by bullying them. Wouldn't that be excellent in a relentless manner? It's called progress, Dom. Yeah, progress. That's right.

But just think, and if you scale that up, Charles, you know how in recent times there's been, I mean, someone call it a worrying social development of the, you know, the murder squads where they basically recruit a bunch of almost kids, like 19 year olds, whatever, get recruited on the, on the dark web paid in crypto. They don't even know who's paying them to go and murder people. So they'll steal a car, go and shoot. They're often not very good at shootings. They often miss.

But then they go and torch the car. that's just the beginning. It's an entirely sort of online remote. They can't, even if the police catch them, as they sometimes do on the way, they can't at all work out of who they paid them. So think of the robotic version of that. Yes, you're right. I suppose you could call it a Terminator.

It's probably a real thing that's going to happen. This is horrific, Don. Why are we doing this? Why are we selling off our water and changing our greed? Building massive data centres, which apparently, are not going to need renewable energy, by the way. Well, excepting Queensland and Darwin. I love that.

I love the idea that I will, you know, Queensland. Did you see the news? Yeah, yeah, as I'm referring to, in the hottest bits of the country, the most warm bits. They can opt out of global warming. They can just opt out of their responsibility. Why didn't we think of that? I don't understand why New South Wales doesn't get with Queensland and just start pumping carbon into the atmosphere. It's too hard.

Too hard to put solid panels on the roof. Why just for data centers? Like, if that holds. Why don't we just do it for everything? Why don't we? And I don't think coal. It shouldn't be coal. It should be like, let's go back to wood.

To wood. Wood powered data centers. You know what I want. Let's cut down the forests. Let's integrate. So what we should be doing, Charles, this is something we should do. So when Amazon buyers and apps or META have done this as well, a lot of, anthropic too, When they buy a massive, like, consignments of rare, lovely books that have been red and cared for, and they rip the spines off and destroy them.

They should just put them in a giant furnace and use the fuel. Fuel. Use the smoke or whatever from that, the steam turbines. Yes. To fire the data center. Yes. And just get all the books in the world, ingest them all and burn them all. We can have more kickboxing robots.

Fahrenheit 451. Isn't that the original thing of the book? Yeah. We don't need those books. We don't need the ideas. No, we need more kickboxing. Kickboxing robots. I do think it's interesting though, that China.

So you know how AI in America means, oh, okay, let's come up with a prediction engine that can replace jobs and make most of the population redundant? Yeah, yeah, yeah. At a really fundamental level. That's the sort of ethical, the moral story that they've, given about why AI is necessary is. Oh, well, because we can just emiserate vast sway that's the population. And somehow everyone's going, oh, okay, yeah, we'll set up our laws to enable that.

That sounds perfect. Creating better jobs running the AI, rip up the books and turn them into smoke. Whereas in China, the AI revolution, they've gone, it's not necessarily about language models. It's about movement models and things are that. And that's why robots. are coming ahead so much is because they're providing the same sort of scientific insights that AI learning and generative AI has created in the word space, but in a physical space, right?

Like, it's a different form of the same sort of insights that were developed by Google back in 2010, right? And arguably, you'd have to say, don't you think that China, like, is a more useful form of AI? Like, having robots that can kickbox sounds like a far more practical application. I'd pay. I'd pay to see that. Charles, did you see the amazing walkthrough in the New York Times recently of what day

life is like in Beijing now, the extent to which AI is embedded in everyday life over there? So it's not just kickboxing. Let me just give you a quick rundown after the ads of the paradise that they're building in China. As long as you don't mind your face being scanned all the time. That's fine. The Chaser Report.

News a few days after it happens. You've got a famous face, Charles. Your face is already out there. Well, I kind of feel like there's no way that my face could be scanned more than it gets scanned at the moment when I go to Coles. Kind of feel like the baseline of scanning is being scanned. What is it? It's something like you're walking to a Coles and your face gets scanned 21,000 times by the time you've left. In some aisles, they even have the camera, the screen there so you can see it, record.

I've now take, yes, yes, and they've got that little, when you go into the vitamin section of our local coals, it sort of suddenly pipes up and goes, by the way, you're being monitored. Yeah, that really actually incentivise me to steal some stuff to see if I could get away with it. I wasn't going to be otherwise. I now wear a cap into coals. Every time I go to Coles now, I wear a cap and I try and look as suspicious as possible without actually doing anything. I might get a mask.

Yeah. We should give this a go. It's so fun. Charles, we should go to Coles. Then they don't let you out because they've got those automatic doors, right? And so they then don't let you out and you've got to wait and you've got to go, oh, excuse me, I'm going to let that out. And you just go, that's the AI thinking that I've stolen something. It's not letting me out.

So what we should do, Charles, is see we should challenge each other in the local Coles to behave as furtive. Like, I'll bring a big jacket and just sort of look like I'm stuffed. thing stuff into it. Because you're ruining the training data then. Yes. Because what, like, if you go in there and look all unsuspicious, then what it means is the AI then learns, oh, right, that's the behavior of somebody unsuspicious. We've got to poison the data by looking as suspicious as possible.

So you don't know, like the AI can't work out with, but hang on, that person wasn't stealing. They just looked suspicious. Oh, I don't know. I'm confused now. And to get it, if we do all do it, we can, we can, we can, defeat the AI dog. We all descend on colds. Isn't it, isn't it pathetic that we've already having to come up with a way to change our own lives in order to just live in the world of AI

already? It's, it's evolution. We're adapting Charles to the new reality. That's, it's very exciting. Let's not do the AI walk-through thing though, actually, because I'm almost at the end of the episode. Oh, okay. Oh, no, actually, no, it's fine. No, no, run us through the New York So this is New York Times. This is one of these very impressive kind of visual journalism things, whether you scroll down and there's all this video and whatever embedded. So you commit home, your work days over, you're leaving the office, you call a car to a nearby intersection.

Now, outside the front door of your office, there's a device that I'm quoting here that claims to help the traffic police keep order by tracking Jay Walkers. So what it is, is it's a pedestrian crossing like with the red and green man, only there's cameras and facial recognition everywhere. So if you jaywalk, it flags you and there's a warning sound. So it'll shame you if you jaywalk and maybe you lose social credit points. Your car has arrived. It's a smart car you can talk to.

Now, is there a human driver? I think there's a, yeah, there's a human driver, but there's gadgets you can talk to. You can ask to find a nearby grocery store or whatever and even get a recipe for braced pork. So you don't have to talk to the driver. No, you talk to the robot. You talk to the robot instead. So then if you're going out, let's see. say having a week, this is a weekend here, you're going for a wander.

If you want to drink, there's just a fridge on the street, like undercover kind of fridgett Lawning. Just takes payment by facial recognition. Thanks to your WeChat wallet. Can I say, I did that in England. I went to one of those Amazon GoFresh things, right? And the whole point was, oh, it just, I forget how it worked, but it literally links to your Amazon account.

So as soon as you, like, I think you just press it, but like, it sort of somehow knows that you logged into Amazon. You go and pick up all the stuff and then you just leave and it knows what it is. And it was sort of like, oh, this is an amazing AI thing, except that it turned out it wasn't AI at all. It was that they had a whole lot of cameras and there was. Oh, that's right. There were people in the Philippines looking at your every move. Yes. And just tallying it up.

And it turned out to be total fraud. And they shut it down just about three months ago because. They had to admit, oh yeah, this doesn't scale. This is the total problem. Yeah. And it took about 20, 30 minutes for it to show up. And everyone couldn't work out why it took so long if it was scanning the products. And that was why.

They had to, yeah, but it was, it was like magic. But I suppose that's because it was just an actual magic trick. Yeah, yeah. It didn't actually. No magic at all. It was like the Wizard of Oz. Yeah. So in China, you finish your drink from the fridge.

And there's an AI powered garbage can that scans your trash and tells you which bin to put it It's an AI Craig. Yes. Imagine this Sydney version with Craig popping up and lecturing you about. Oh, you've got a non-reusible coffee cup there. It scans your trash. Is that a single use bag? I see.

Is that a plastic straw? No, because we remove those. And it tells you which bin to put it in except it doesn't work. In the UKP. It doesn't work. No. It doesn't work. But there is a convenience store that's staffed by a robot.

You go in and the robot sells you the stuff. A kickboxing robot? Unfortunately not. It would be good for shoplifting, wouldn't it? This is so disappointed. Dom, I thought you were going to sort of paint a picture of modern, you know, like our future. Okay, how about this? You walk past a shop.

Yeah. You see an outfit in the window that you like. Yes. You don't actually need to go in. You take a picture. Oh, yeah. And Taubow and an e-commerce platform helps you find it online and also shows you what it would look like on your body. And do you get a T-Moo version, which is like a mini?

A much cheaper. Version of it. Yeah, right. Okay. And they've even got humanoid robot pets. And there's even a robot panda and one of those freaky dogs. You know those freaky like Boston Dynamics dogs? You can get those too.

Right. So instead of having a pet, you have a uni tree robot dog. But what would be the point? Because isn't the whole point that your pet has to poo and that's why you take it for a walk? You wouldn't have to walk it. You wouldn't have to walk it. You get no exercise. So there's free consultations with AI doctors.

What do the dogs think about being replaced? Like, you know, replacing huge. Humans is one thing. But replacing dogs. Yeah, that's going too far, arguably. It's not inhumane. It's in canine. It's in canine.

In canine. In canine. And they're using chatbots as virtual tutors for their children. That's good. Rather than me having to spend time parenting my children. Yeah. Can't they just talk to Claude or something? Well, that's what Sam Altman got into trouble with a few weeks ago, didn't he?

Because he said, oh, killer app for AI is you put all you kids schedule and link all their sort of school feeds into AI. And then it can generate a podcast talking about your kids' interests. And so you can play it on the way to school in the car with them, right? And it can sort of. And people are going, yeah, but why don't you just have a conversation with your kid about what they're doing in school? I mean, they've got to talk to them.

Yeah, you've got to talk to them. It's boring. Although that said, Charles, we know that no one is embracing the AI revolution more than China, right? Like they've got the robotic games, all these. The idea that some level of surveillance might be creepy, obviously doesn't fly over there with the cameras of insects and stuff. Exactly. They've been living that reality for 30 years.

But they're actually apparently tightening regulations around AI companion chatbots. You know why? They're worried that they'll make young people lonely and discourage them from getting married and having kids. They're actually shut down bite dancers, Dalbao, which is a companion. chatbot service because they're worried people won't have kids. Because people were falling in love with it. And in actual fact, when they shut that down, they did it very quickly.

They did it overnight. Yeah. And people were devastated. They're crying. People were engaged to their chatbots at that point. Yeah. And it was context rich. So it would keep going.

Like, people had spent months building up a relationship, a very deep, meaningful relationship with this AI chatbot. And then the government just took it away and destroyed people's relationships. I love how China sees, oh, wait a minute, these people might actually be developing deep psychological issues of dependence, of emotional dependence with chatbots. Let's shut it down. And America sees that exact same thing and goes, okay, let's fund it. That's great.

We can hook everyone into a dystopian, lonely future. Well, Metas just had to pay, I think, $27 billion just today because it's apparently social media is designed to be deliberately addictive. I mean, if I only there'd be some warning about this, I mean, who knew? Yes. So, look, huge surprise that settlement. But I think actually the number that you got is a little bit, not the actual number. What's the actual number?

Well, a lot of the number is related to the idea that if TikTok and, what's the other one, Snapchat, also join this, will do this as well. But actually, we don't have to pay you if you can't defeat anyone. else. So it's sort of like the headline number, I bet you will end up costing about $24 to matter. I bet you. I just checked it. It's up to $17 billion. Yeah. And then, yes, if the other, if the other social media, if the other social media, up to $17,000, up to $17,000, from $1 to $17 billion is the settlement. Oh, the devil's in the deep. I mean, not to be, no, not to be a, you know, Spoils, spoiled.

They'll initially pay $12 billion, the New York Times says. Which I think is about one day worth of revenue for the Amiens. It's less than 10% of their annual revenue. Yeah. Additional $5 billion of Snap, TikTok and YouTube also settle, apparently. So we'll see. But won't that give Mehta an incentive to make the next version even more addictive to fund the settlement?

Oh, yes, of course. Oh, that's perfect. Yes. That'll do it. Yeah. I love it. Creative destruction of capitalism. No, I think the creative destruction is of children.

Yeah, of children, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The expendable ones in the equation. Very good, Charles. Well, I'll see you. I'm going to interact with the chatbot of you next time. I think it'll be a bit easier. Yes, I think that's much easier.

Yeah, I would much prefer that for everyone. We're a part of the Iconoclass Network for now. See ya.