Go read how Pepper was a very bad robot

SoftBank’s Pepper robot is dead, and The Wall Street Journal is dancing upon its grave with a thorough account of how the “emotional robot” failed to live up to the hype. Expectations were so inflated back in 2014 that the first batch of 1,000 robots sold out in a minute, despite being priced close to $2,000.

The entire article is well worth a read as a reminder that tech is hard, and predicting its impact on society is even harder.

Although SoftBank certainly overhyped Pepper, saying its launch would be remembered “100, 200, or 300 years” into the future, humans are also to blame for getting sucked in by the bot’s doe-eyed demeanor, despite The Verge’s article titled “I met an emotional robot and felt nothing.”

The WSJ report does...

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