🔌 Brother, can you spare a charge?

Remember when robots were going to take all our jobs? One skipped the job entirely and went straight to panhandling.

A video out of China shows a Unitree G1 humanoid robot down on its knees on a sidewalk, begging people for money. Little donation bowl. A QR code. A handwritten sign pleading for help with its electricity bill. And yes, a bystander actually dropped something in the bowl. (We have officially out-empathized our own common sense.)

The bot reportedly whimpered lines like “My battery is low, please help.”

Here’s the part that sticks with me, though. A machine that costs more than a used car got grown adults to feel sorry for it with a paper sign and a sad pose. That’s not a malfunction. That’s a preview.

I’d have given it a dollar, but I figured it could just charge it.