Robotics company Faraday Future promotes $90K AI-powered Humanoid robot in NYC

New Yorkers gawked and wrestled with mixed emotions over the weekend as Faraday Future EAI Robotics Ecosystem, a California-based company that produces humanoid and bionic robots, promoted a model of its nearly $90,000 all-new Futurist humanoid robot in Brooklyn.

"I think it's very impressive that we have the technology that can do that," tech industry worker Matt Johnson told CBS News as another onlooker described it as “scary.”

At an investor conference on Monday, the company presented a variety of ways its line of robots, priced from $299 up to $137,900, could be useful to humans. Faraday Future’s executive chairman said the Futurist, which starts at $89,900, is particularly attractive for education.

"The No. 1 use case is for education. The schools are buying it, the kids are buying it, the parents are buying it," Wang told CBS News.

The company’s website describes the Futurist as “a full-size professional embodied-intelligence humanoid robot — an all-in-one versatile professional expert, and the first full-size humanoid in the U.S. natively built for NVIDIA Sonic whole-body motion control.”

“It is made for education and research, guided tours and reception, marketing activations, entertainment performance and athletic competition — boxing, soccer, marathon and fitness — with industrial sorting, retail and home service to follow,” Faraday Future explains on its website.

In a press release on Monday, Faraday Future said it's the first U.S. company to deliver both humanoid and bionic robots and is also working to turn its first-mover advantage into a competitive lead.

“In less than a year, the company has taken initial steps toward building a complete ‘Four-Core Full-Stack AI’ ecosystem and developing distinct EAI technology strengths, including its ‘One Brain, All Robots; Multi-Forms, Multi-Capabilities’ approach,” the company said.

“We believe FFR has become the No. 1 provider of K–12 robotics education in the United States and will soon become the No. 1 company in robotics education nationwide. Over the next five years, our goal is to rank among the top three companies in the Physical AI robotics industry overall and to become one of the most valuable EAI companies in the Physical AI era,” added YT Jia, Faraday Future’s founder and global CEO.

The company said it expects October sales and shipments to exceed 300 robots, and cumulative sales and shipments are expected to exceed 1,100 robots by the end of the month. It expects to deliver nearly 2,000 robots in its first full year, CBS reported.

Earlier this summer, the Salamanca City Central School District in New York was expected to bring a $58,000 A.I.-powered robot to the classroom named Sally, but the plan was scuttled after a wave of criticism, The New York Times reported.

“Many parents, teachers and stakeholders are understandably concerned about the presence of artificial intelligence technology in classrooms, particularly when it involves robots that resemble humans,” Betty A. Rosa, the state education commissioner, wrote in a letter to Mark Beehler, the school district's superintendent.

At a subsequent school board meeting, Beehler suggested that if Sally didn’t look so human, perhaps the robot would have been more acceptable. He also said news reports had spread misinformation about the robot.

“If this looked like a golden retriever and did exactly the same thing, I don’t think we’d have as many people here,” Beehler said at the meeting. “But because it looks like a human, everybody seems to have some either excitement about it and are encouraged by it or have some concerns.”