Robotics Company “Whistleblower” Says the Robots Can Crush Your Skull, but the Story Isn’t That Simple

Every few months, we get a new tech panic cycle. A robot moves weirdly, an AI chatbot writes a spooky poem, or someone claims their Roomba has developed opinions. This week's headline villain is 'Figure', the humanoid robot startup backed by Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and basically every billionaire who wants a robot butler.

According to a former employee now calling himself a whistleblower, Figure's robots are "powerful enough to fracture a human skull," which sounds dramatic enough to get its own Netflix limited series. He even claims a malfunction carved a chunk out of a steel fridge, which honestly sounds more like a deleted scene from Terminator than a workplace incident.

But here's where I pump the brakes. This guy wasn't warning consumers about a product hitting shelves next week or next month or probably even next year. The robots aren't ready. They're prototypes. The whole company is still trying to make these things walk, lift boxes, and not fall over like drunk toddlers. Of course they're powerful. Every industrial robot is powerful. That's why they're kept behind safety cages today and not folding your laundry at home.

This situation feels eerily familiar to the guy who got fired from OpenAI years ago because he insisted the very first version of ChatGPT was "alive." You know, the model that hallucinated constantly and would cheerfully tell you how to make a Molotov cocktail as long as you said it was "for schoolwork."

And just like then, many outlets are spinning this into the classic narrative: heroic lone truth-teller versus evil corporation that wants to turn your skull into modern art. In reality, the truth is probably more boring and bureaucratic. A disagreement about safety, a clash of priorities, a messy firing, and now everyone is lawyering up.

None of this means Figure is secretly building murder bots. It means humanoid robots are complicated, safety debates get heated, and tech companies don't love employees accusing them of trying to kill their consumers before they even shipped a product.

So don't worry - the robots aren't launching next Tuesday. Nobody is putting one in their kitchen. And until they stop falling over, I'm not too worried about my skull.