Who Owns the Machine? Reflections on Neo, AI, and the Meaning of Autonomy
At the end of October 2025, 1X Technologies' humanoid robot Neo swept through the tech world like a heatwave. This sleek robot, backed by OpenAI, is touted as the first truly home-friendly physical assistant.
Priced at around $20,000 or $499 per month for leasing, Neo can clean, carry items, and even learn new tasks through imitation. In just a few days, it became the internet's focal point — seemingly, a tireless family companion has finally arrived.
Yet, behind the cheers, a profound reflection on "autonomy" quietly unfolds. Remote control offers the illusion of convenience, but it exposes a core pain point in the AI industry: human operators still lurk in the shadows, and what happens to your privacy data?
As Curious CEO David Tomasian puts it:
"True autonomy is the only way machines can belong to us."
An Illusion: The Myth of Humanoid Robot "Autonomy"
Neo's launch is indeed exhilarating: standing 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 66 pounds, it uses tendon-driven actuators mimicking human muscles, wrapped in a soft shell for safety. Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf exclaimed on X that Neo has "advanced" his timeline for home robot adoption.
In demos, Neo waters plants, opens doors, washes clothes, and scrubs dishes, turning mundane chores into something poetic and efficient.
But this excitement was quickly doused by reality. The Wall Street Journal's hands-on report reveals that many of Neo's movements are still remotely controlled in real time by "experts" via VR.
This isn't sci-fi — it's the current state of AI, where remote piloting aids companies in training models through imitation and reinforcement learning, yet reduces the robot from "independent helper" to "human extension."
Tomasian sharply notes that under this model, your "private robot" isn't truly private: it not only observes your life but uploads data to the cloud, fueling the manufacturer's training.
When a robot can "see" your home layout, recognize your voice, and analyze your habits — yet remains tethered to the manufacturer's servers — who does it really belong to?
From Factory to Home: The Privacy Cost Beneath Autonomy
The wave of humanoid robots is flowing from factories to living rooms. Figure AI's Figure 02 and Tesla's Optimus aim to reshape industry, while Neo pushes the vision into consumer territory — not just productivity, but companionship itself.
This trend is especially urgent in elderly care. Pilot projects in Japan, Korea, and parts of Europe are testing robots for assisting daily activities, monitoring health, and providing emotional support. But Tomasian points out: "The difference between aid and true care lies in understanding context and emotion." If data isn't encrypted and stored locally, "the robot isn't yours—it's someone else's lens."
Privacy expert Kohei Kurihara disclosed on X that Neo users must sign a waiver allowing manufacturers access to certain operational data. This "tech-for-convenience" pact hides cracks in trust. A Medium article bluntly states that this $20,000 robot "needs a human babysitter", with complex tasks requiring an appointment for "expert mode," making users feel like they're renting a "surveilled puppet."
Tomasian emphasizes that for embodied intelligence to evolve like language models, three things are essential: on-device reasoning, multimodal understanding, and encrypted autonomy. AI must not just execute commands but comprehend "why" they are given, ensuring data sovereignty belongs to the user. True care reliability stems from security and privacy, not algorithmic complexity. In other words, autonomy isn't just a technical issue — it's a social contract: Machines should embody trust, not extend surveillance.
From Embodied to Digital: AI Agents' Lessons on Autonomy
Neo's controversy reflects a deeper trend: "Autonomy" isn't confined to mechanical limbs — it's also about digital intelligence. Rather than teaching robots in your living room how to wash dishes, why not have agents on the network learn to "act on your behalf"?
AI Agents are the extension of this direction. They're not humanoid replicas but digital extensions of human will — capable of executing tasks, making decisions, and completing transactions on behalf of users, with data ownership retained by the individual.
IBM's "2025 AI Agent Report" states that Agentic AI promises an 8x productivity boost, hinging on autonomous reasoning combined with privacy protection.
Google Cloud research shows 52% of enterprises using generative AI have deployed AI Agents.
Deloitte predicts half of companies will enable Agentic AI by 2027.
Gartner forecasts that within four years, agents will autonomously handle 15% of daily decisions.
This shift redefines "autonomy": no longer machines mimicking human limbs, but agents learning to represent human intent.
XWorld: A Real-World Experiment in "Machines Belonging to People"
Amid this trend, the XWorld platform's explorations stand out. Since its 2023 launch, it has built a self-sustaining "agent economy" by combining AI training with token incentives: users can create, deploy, and monetize their own AI Agents. The integration of stablecoins makes settlements lower-friction, ensuring value flows under user control.
Today, XWorld boasts over 11 million downloads and 1 million monthly actives in its Telegram MiniApp ecosystem, with cumulative token trading volume exceeding $34.7 million.
Here, autonomy is no illusion — it's a reality co-built by users, developers, and agents: machines not only execute instructions but become "intelligence we own."
Epilogue: Who Truly Owns the Machines?
Neo reminds us: when "autonomy" becomes a selling point, oversight and trust must evolve in tandem.
The future shown by the AI Agent industry offers another possibility:
Machines are no longer just used, but truly "owned";
They no longer serve the network, but human will and data sovereignty.
XWorld's experiment may provide the answer: when "agent autonomy" merges with "user ownership," machines finally begin to belong to us.
In the future, when robots no longer need human eyes, that may be humanity's true liberation.
🔗 Learn more and join XWorld
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The Sandbox Hires Ex-PlayStation, Apple Exec to Drive Game's Creator Economy
Nicola Sebastiani, who previously worked at Ubisoft and PlayStation, is joining The Sandbox to lead its creator economy push.
Nicola Sebastiani (left) and The Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget. Image: The Sandbox
Voxel-style NFT gaming platform The Sandbox has hired game industry veteran Nicola Sebastiani to be its chief content officer and help develop the crypto-forward company’s creator economy, the firm announced Tuesday.
Sebastiani has worked in the gaming industry for years, from a role on Ubisoft’s mobile team to co-founding the Apple Arcade subscription service for the App Store, and ultimately leading PlayStation’s mobile strategy over the last two years. Now he has moved into the Web3 world with The Sandbox.
“I think that we are at a historical shift in gaming,” Sebastiani told Decrypt in an interview. “We are fully entering the creator economy.”
Sebastiani believes that user-generated content, or UGC, is a gaming trend that will continue to gain popularity. And while The Sandbox primarily offers mini-games and gaming experiences within its broader platform, Sebastiani said that he wants players to feel free to use the platform however they like, whether it’s for socializing or experimentation.
“I really think of us as a social platform,” Sebastiani said of The Sandbox.
In addition to the game’s creator economy, Sebastiani will also oversee game publishing, internal game production, and the development of The Sandbox tools Game Maker and VoxEdit at the company.
Compared to rival platforms in the broader gaming industry like Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft, The Sandbox requires some knowledge and use of crypto and NFTs to fully experience. Users can connect their crypto wallets, purchase in-game items with its SAND token, and buy virtual land NFTs to build on and play within.
“I think it’s critical to The Sandbox as far as ownership, as far as giving creators and players leverage on their achievements, what they build,” Sebastiani said of the platform’s crypto elements.
A major step toward empowering creators is giving them the ability to publish and potentially monetize their own experiences. Sandbox players will finally be able to build and self-publish their experiences by the end of this year, according to the company.
The Sandbox, which has seen roughly 4.5 million registered crypto wallets, takes a 5% platform fee which Sebastiani said “is reinvested in the community” via different methods such as the company’s Game Makers Fund.
By comparison, Epic Games currently takes 12% of creator revenue, Roblox takes 30%, and rival NFT-powered platform Decentraland takes 2.5% of creator revenue.
The Sandbox saw approximately 3,840 unique active wallets engage with the platform in the past month, generating a total of $2.26 million in total volume traded according to data from crypto analytics firm DappRadar. Decentraland saw about 2,770 unique wallets generating roughly $19,880.
Overall, crypto-powered game platforms remain much smaller than industry titans like Roblox, which boasts over 200 million monthly active players. Epic’s Fortnite sees similar numbers, with about 230 million monthly active users as the platform increasingly shifts toward emphasizing its user-generated content.
The Sandbox and other crypto-powered metaverse platforms may have to continue to appeal to creators to stay competitive as the creator economy evolves. Goldman Sachs predicted earlier this year that the $250 billion creator economy will continue to grow, and could swell to become a $480 billion industry within the next three years.
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