GoKawiilWhen we think about the existential threats of new technology, we’re usually thinking about something like the recent negotiations between Anthropic and the Pentagon over how AI can be used in the military. It’s terrifying to think about — how long will it be before a nuclear weapon can be detonated without any human intervention?
We’ve been spending so much time thinking about these potential catastrophes that we haven’t braced ourselves for the more immediate danger in our midst: dancing robots.
A dancing robot at the hot pot restaurant Haidilao in Cupertino, California, boogied a little too hard, got too close to a table, and started smashing plates and sending dishware and chopsticks everywhere, prompting the restaurant’s staff to intervene, according to a video posted on the Chinese social network Xiaohongshu by user Meooow.
A dancing humanoid robot got a little too funky during a performance in Cupertino, California and had to be restrained by staff after knocking items off a table. pic.twitter.com/nZQsGoFHn6 — ABC News (@ABC) March 19, 2026
From what we can see from the video, at least three employees struggled to restrain the robot as it flung its arms around. One Haidilao employee seems to be looking at her phone, perhaps in an attempt to toggle something on an app controlling the robot. It’s possible the robot — which appears to be an AgiBot X2 robot, which was featured at the CES conference in January — has a kill switch, but the staff might not have known how to operate it.
If you’re not familiar with hot pot, you should know that, as its name suggests, it involves very hot pots of soup. No one likes spilled food, but if the robot were to knock piping bowls of bone broth over, it wouldn’t just be a culinary disaster, it might seriously burn someone. Not to mention any potential blunt-force damage from the now-moshing automaton.
When The Killers sang “Are we human or are we dancer,” we did not realize they were asking us to take a stand in the future robot wars.
Haidilao confirmed the mechanical contretemps in a statement to NBC News, but denied the robot was “malfunctioning or out of control.”
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