Who wants to watch robots dance? And Disney's Animatronic Lincoln has been around since the 1964 World's Fair. Still on display, giving the Gettysburg Address — at Disney World's "Hall of Presidents" since 1971:Impressive https://t.co/IacxCOxpki
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2025
Disney Animatronics have always been pretty dull. There's no real sense that Abraham Lincoln has returned or that any sort of magic is occurring.
Are we awed by the technology or do we find it offputting? Musk seems impressed that robots can dance. I'm impressed that human beings dance.
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69 comments:
I can't dance, I can't talk
Only thing about me is the way I walk
I can't dance, I can't sing
I'm just standing here selling everything. CC, JSM
Robots can't pull that crap in Utah.
If humans didn’t dance, would robots dance?
The technology that gozinta dancing robots is what’s impressive, and unimaginably useful across all enterprises.
I like the fact that they're kind of small. That way they're portable when the battery is down and less likely to achieve world domination when fully charged.
I concur. Not impressive. As good as the butler robot a human was hawking. Apparently there’s people back at headquarters that sees out of the robot and makes corrections. Or the Waymo that pulled up to the curb for a woman and there was a guy curled up in the hatch. That was not a pleasant conversation..:
How about a robotic Elaine? It's GOT to be better.
I'm just glad some liberal douchebag is out of a job. Bring on the rest of the robots.
Let me ask Grok what to think and I'll give you my answer, professor... *wink
(I'd rather see machines dance than do my research and thinking for me, but you do you. I guess lots of humans prefer a human partner for physical things, but they don't always come prepared to think and discuss on the same level so you turn to something artificial the way others will choose sexdance/exercise robots.)
“Everybody goes to parties
They dance this mess around
They do all sixteen dances
They do the Shu-ga-loo
Do the Shy Tuna
Do the Camel Walk
Do the Hip-O-Crit
Ah, hippy hippy forward
Hippy hippy hippy hippy hippy shake
Oh, it's time to do 'em right”
I just bought Tesla stock. Musk says his robot biz will be bigger than his car biz. I just bought a 2023 FSD ready Tesla Model 3. The self-driving is absolutely amazing. It’s literally a medical prosthesis for the elderly suffering reduced vision and slower reflexes. The car itself is an engineering revolution. I’ll go with Musk here.
Technically impressive, but utterly boring and pointless, much like all the AI animations Musk was recently excited about. I'm a huge Musk fan, but he's a bit childish in many ways. If silly enthusiasm is the worst of his traits, I won't begrudge it.
I'm just glad some liberal douchebag is out of a job
Ha. Remember when the lefties lost the election and they were all dancing at inappropriate events? Wonder if robots can run for senate?
Your take demonstrates the notion that Disney World is for children and not for adults.
“I can’t dance, I never could, I guess my feet don’t match. I’d be out there on the dance floor but I’m afraid of hurtin my back”. God bless Tom T Hall.
They look like little terrorists wearing keffiyehs.
Like westword (yes)
Ann is like one of the town elders from Footloose when it comes to robots dancing.
"Stop that, you damn impertinent robots! Get back to work. Clear that creepy leftover tofiglet head off the dining table and go do the dishes.
Musk is talking about the technical difficulty not the aesthetic appeal except that it looks natural.
If a robot starts dancing will it develop a soul?
When the robots like dancing, we'll have to start paying them for their work because they'll want to buy songs from Amazon and iTunes.
It won't be China that has the first robot army, it will be Taylor Swift. All metal Swifties.
I thought the westworld redux left nothing to the imagination
It's the robots who listen to Metallica and Iron Maiden you gotta watch out for. The ones who come home with elaborate, monochrome tattoos of Darpa dogs in the wilderness atop piles of human skulls howling at the moon.
Cue robot rebellion sketch by Ryan George
They used the real Joey in the exhibit.
Nobody noticed.
Here Unitree robots doing Webster flips...
Fake video! Although they do appear short in height, they are still taller than Emmanuel Lewis' 4 feet, 3 inches.
robot flips? I like Elon - but I'm yawning.
Mr. Lincoln was impressive back in the day. Sure, you'd never mistake an audioanimatronic for a real human, but it was cutting edge tech back then, and gave a sense of what it might have been like to experience Lincoln speaking over 100 years before.
Interesting that Chinese robots are significantly shorter than Chinamen.
The World's Fair Presidents went to Disneyland, not Florida, as did the Small World brats.
It's not impressive if you have never turned a wrench.
Boyd: yes! The next Amazon-breaker will be the 3-DARPA-dog T-shirt! CC, JSM
Obviously, our dear Professor never designed a functioning mechanism.
Ralph... Check her facts always.
Once tenured, never mistaken with the elite ladies...
Do not question the professor.
It's no Chuckie Cheese act, but it's OK.
Disney’s animatronics were intended as a glimpse of what Future may bring. People looked at these displays in 1960 and wondered about possibilities of technological progress. The progress marched on indeed, so by 1990 such Disney’s exhibits looked dated. Now they look absolutely ridiculous. Why are they still on display? As a glimpse of what the Past was?
I think I'm gonna live just long enough to get completely depressed about the state of technology and the state of mankind. I get the distinct feeling that the 20th century may not hold it's place as the most deadly and destructive. My last words may be "Thank God, just in time."
The robots China likes to brag about aren't autonomous. They're remote control.
Listening to the Gettysburg Address, especially thevend, always gives me chills.
Be especially wary of dancing robot chicks. They'll stab you in the back.
“No, it's not impressive. It's depressing.”
You’re depressed by how impressive it is.
Behold your doom, meatsacks!
"Musk seems impressed that robots can dance. I'm impressed that human beings dance."
I'm impressed that human beings can make robots that dance.
Anthropomorphized Intelligence (AI) is a fetus... feature of social progress that is equivocal and inclusive, neither discerning nor creative, dependent on a dynamically stable evolution of "IT" and anthropomorphic inference, or indifference, as the case may be.
I'm with Original Mike. I don't wanna go too much 'get off my lawn' but not much more than 3 decades ago bipedal humanoid robots were the stuff of cartoons and science fiction movies.
People in the 80’s were doing the robot dance. Now, robots are dancing like humans. Does this obsolete robot ‘moves’?
Progress.
RoboCop featured the integration, recycling of a nonviable human carbon cluster into a robot frame as an Anthropogenic Intelligence (AI) control system... capable of dancing, fucking, aborting, envisioned the future of planned parenthood umbrella corporation as climate friendly, socially progressive. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #Creeping
Dynamically stable cultural appropriation? Maybe a fetus... feature of social inclusion. You've come a long way, baby.
And Trump thought that our "dancing" wing was impressive technology.
For adults, especially 50 years later, Disney animation does seem clunky and amateurish, but Disney is for kids. Politics and speechifying aren't for kids. At 8 years old, "Pirates of the Caribbean" wasn't boring. If you were really tiny, even "It's a Small World" wasn't either.
Why hasn't the old robot technology been replaced? Come up with enough new "content" for kids both on the screen and in the parks and charge families an arm and a leg to get in, and you can make enough to keep the rest of the parks as they are. If Disney does do a major renovation, I'd fear for things like Frontierland or Main Street U.S.A. -- irrelevant for today's world and today's kids -- being lost and replaced with worse things.
But what are the Disneyland's in Japan and China like? People there may be used to today's robotics. Are they satisfied with ancient technology or do they get something new.
I don't want dancing robots, or poetry-producing robots, or anything with robots or AI combined with the arts and humanities. The humanities without the "human" part is worthless.
That said, technology that's useful is, well, useful. If Tesla FSD can keep my 81 year old mom on the road safely, helping her maintain independence for a few more years, I'm all for it. Speaking of that, Shouting Thomas, how good do you think FSD is on mountain roads and in wintry conditions? Is the Tesla's weight a factor for driving on wet/icy/snowy roads? If it can handle those conditions well, I might start nudging her seriously about buying one.
Call me when they do Fred and Ginger.
Technically the balance aspect is probably what Elon is excited about.
Maybe they can rent those things out for wedding receptions and corporate Christmas parties, so the women can have someone to dance with.
Are the robots programmed to do a certain dance, and the music is coordinated? Or can the robots react to external changes in the music?
Do you have to get them drunk to get them started?
I suspect that the robots have much better rhythm than I ever will. I think that DJT has me beat as far as dance moves go.
Anthropogenic Intelligence: dynamic and creative
Dance!
We're headed for world where any guy under 6'2" will have to get up the nerve to ask a sex robot to dance if he's gonna have any hope at all of getting laid.
Well remember bananas
@Vonnegan
I haven’t driven my Model 3 through a winter yet. It’s certainly not the model you would buy if that was your concern. It’s slung too close to the road. I’d go AWD Model Y. It’s higher off the road and easier to get in and out of. I rely on the FSD 95% of the time. There are specific instances where it’s necessary to override. And you have to get into the menu and set a max speed level speed limit to keep the car from excessively exceeding the posted speed limit.
“It's not impressive if you have never turned a wrench.”
Howard gets one right. Musk is impressed because he understands the challenges involved.
I’ve always thought that one of the most impressive miracles of modernity is the hot shower on tap. In almost any First World residence. Airing how jaded you are can be fun but doesn’t pass for intelligence among the thinking and doing.
Safety Dance.
“how good do you think FSD is on mountain roads and in wintry conditions? Is the Tesla's weight a factor for driving on wet/icy/snowy roads? If it can handle those conditions well, I might start nudging her seriously about buying one.”
That’s an interesting question. I’ve been on steep roads where instinct, experience, evaluating which foot-wide patch is frozen, compacted, rutted, etc., was all that was keeping me out of the ditch. Will AI ever be able to make that kind of judgement?
keep the car from excessively exceeding the posted speed limit.
Naughty Elon!
Somewhat used EVs are the way to go. Big initial depreciation, true of most expensive cars.
Will AI ever be able to make that kind of judgement?
I think yes. But:
In the late-stage Heinlein novel Friday, there are APs - Artificial Persons, created from enhanced human DNA but looking exactly like natural humans, and another type of lab-created person that doesn't have the limitation of having to look human (can't remember that one's acronym or name). In one tiny passage, a human ballistic-rocket pilot is arguing for keeping human pilots in the cockpits, even though an enhanced person could surpass the natural human in every important way (and also, with a ballistic rocket, there would be virtually nothing ANYone or -thing could do if something went wrong). His reason: if something did go wrong, a natural human pilot would TRY. The enhanced person would have only his own survival to try for, and since these enhanced persons were considered not-human and therefore not requiring civil rights, why not bring down a rocket full of human passengers?
Anyway. I think it's helpful for the dancing robots that a kind of robotic style of dancing is de trop at the moment. But yes, the balance is the impressive thing - bipedal robots that can move smoothly like humans have challenged robotics people for quite a while.
“That’s an interesting question. I’ve been on steep roads where instinct, experience, evaluating which foot-wide patch is frozen, compacted, rutted, etc., was all that was keeping me out of the ditch. Will AI ever be able to make that kind of judgement?”
Yes, but not yet. One of the weak spots of Tesla FSD is noticing and avoiding obstacles on the ground. There are a few others.
“Somewhat used EVs are the way to go. Big initial depreciation, true of most expensive cars.”
I bought a used, 2023 FSD Tesla Model 3 with 24k miles for $22,500 from the Tesla Used Inventory site. Completely refurbished and checked out. The general notion that Teslas are very expensive is just not true. The bigger sedan, the Model Y, comes in new at around $36,000, which is just about what any other standard sedan from any manufacturer costs.
Some MAGA robophobia in the comments..
Musk seems impressed that robots can dance. I'm impressed that human beings dance.
Professor, I’ve been reading your droll, pithy, sensible comments for more than twenty years.
I think this one may be your best.
Why didn't Disney (or whoever) get a competent actor to voice the robot Lincoln? I've read that a lot of people at Gettysburg ignored Lincoln's speech, and if Abe had delivered it the way this robot did, I wouldn't blame them.
I went to see "The Nutcracker" today and thought about this post during the part where the "dolls" dance. I wondered if, sometime in the future, dancing robots will influence this and instead of the dolls looking stiffer than the other dancers, they will be more acrobatic, like the dancing robots.
Its not impressive for dancing. Its impressive if we get these metal clankers huffing cartons for me in my warehouse.
How many comments in and no one has brought up the dancing bear?
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