Are we facing a machine revolt? The real threat may look completely different
The humanoid robot told me it had no arm, even though its design clearly resembled a human body. A few months earlier, AI models during security tests found a way to escape from the isolated environment and gain access to the Internet. Today’s artificial intelligence can be absurdly clumsy and disturbingly efficient at the same time. What should worry us more than the film’s “revolt of the machines” is the fact that systems whose behavior we still cannot always predict are gaining more and more agency.
During the SmartUp! conference High Tide Szczecin 2026 I asked the humanoid robot: “High five.” He replied that he had no arm. The problem is that he had a hand and we all saw it. I remember this short exchange of words more than the spectacular shows of Chinese humanoids dancing and performing martial arts routines on stage. In front of me was a machine with a human silhouette and metal limbs, and the layer responsible for the conversation acted as if it had no access to information about its physical capabilities.
I do not know the architecture of this particular system, so it is impossible to clearly indicate the reason for this answer. One possible explanation is insufficient integration of the dialogue module with the motion control layer and device state data. And this is what’s interesting: an advanced language model placed in a humanoid structure does not automatically become coherent, embodied intelligence. So instead of the Terminator, I saw a very eloquent “assistant” in metal armor whose linguistic abilities were not integrated with the capabilities of his physical body.
The robot is no longer a programmed arm
