"Coupang Part-Time Jobs May All Disappear" Humans Shocked by the Arrival of Robot Workers [YouTube Kaleidoscope]
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- 2026-05-16 09:00:00
- Updated
- 2026-05-16 09:00:00
[The Financial News] "Guys, we're cooked." A viewer watching the YouTube live stream left that comment.
A YouTube live broadcast streamed by U.S. robotics startup Figure AI is shocking viewers. It may be ushering in a world where people are no longer needed at places like Coupang logistics centers.
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Recognizing items on its own, flipping them, and working an eight-hour shift
\r\nThe live-streamed video showed the following: a fictional robot part-time worker named 'Gary' flips parcel boxes and moves them onto a conveyor belt. It is a kind of fictional worksite similar to a Coupang logistics center. At the end of the conveyor belt, there appears to be a device that reads barcodes from the floor. For the parcel boxes to be recognized, all barcode information must face downward. Gary picks up a stack of parcels, inspects them, then flips each box so the barcode side faces the floor before smoothly pushing it onto the conveyor belt. The way it uses its eyes to pick up and inspect boxes, then flips them with just the right amount of force, looks strikingly human. It occasionally made mistakes like a person, but for the most part it worked as hard as a human would. Gary's shift in the live broadcast was set at eight hours. As the shift neared its end, another robot part-timer, 'Frank,' slowly approached and stood behind it. When Gary finished its shift, Frank took over. Frank, running the same program, also began flipping parcel boxes with the same deft movements as Gary. Perhaps the shift change helped ease the strain, because Figure AI's live broadcast had already run for more than 30 hours as of the 15th. The robot is still priced at tens of millions of won per unit, but the video effectively proved that it can work like a human.
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"It's chilling. We're done for" — uneasy humans
\r\nThe reaction from viewers was explosive. Comments poured in, such as, "Parcel logistics part-time jobs will disappear into legend now" and "The robot moves so much like a person that it's creepy." In particular, self-deprecating jokes like "Humans, we're doomed" flooded message boards, underscoring how the real fear that robots might come for people's jobs is now becoming tangible.According to Figure AI, the robot used in the demonstration was designed to operate autonomously based on the company's AI system, Helix-02. It is a system built to carry out tasks without human intervention. As experts questioned whether robots could work for long hours like humans, Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock reportedly took on the live-stream challenge to prove it.
ksh@fnnews.com Kim Seong-hwan Reporter