The Buddha’s lesson for robots: Who’s real, who’s not?

CCTV’s 2026 Spring Festival Gala was held on the evening of 16 February, with robots from various tech companies taking the stage to dance and perform. The proportion of robot performances increased significantly, making this the gala with the highest density of robot appearances in history. The show was dubbed the “Robot Spring Festival Gala”. 

A wide variety of robots were featured, including companion robots, bionic robots — even special robots that were a perfect replica of a human being’s appearance.

At the same time, the robots were seen as having reached new heights with their performance. Not only did they do parkour, perform continuous one-legged backflips, execute difficult jumps and rapidly change formation, they also sparred with children using staffs and performed drunken fist (醉拳) routines.

However, while the “Robot Spring Festival Gala” had its plaudits, some netizens were sceptical, commenting, “Robots were invented to replace me as beasts of burden so that I could sing and dance. And yet now, I’m still toiling away while the robot that sings and dances”. 

Others added, “Before, it was just the New Year’s atmosphere that was missing — now even the human element is gone as well.”

Developing robots with embodied intelligence based on artificial intelligence is one of the technological breakthroughs that could change the world and improve human life. But a world filled with robots might not be a good thing. A truly good world is one with robots that are subjected to conditions and rules; only robots that are humane or are aligned with human nature are the ones that can truly win people’s favour.

The rules are in fact quite clear and simple; robots were invented to help humans work, especially to do the dirty work. That is to say, robots should be doing menial labour, not sing and dance while humans continue to toil. 

This also touches on a fundamental issue: robots must not only submit to human control and command, and assume menial tasks, they must also not upstage humans in terms of status. Robots must always rank below humans — even an infant is its master, just like how there is a vast gap in status between a baby and a pet dog in a family.

Of course, on top of doing the dirty and heavy work, robots can play other roles, such as providing emotional value to people and entertaining the public. The robot performances at the gala belong to this category. Yet, if people see such performances as robots stealing the limelight, this suggests an inversion in human-robot relations. 

That said, once robots enter the market, this issue can be addressed at the source — as long as robots are programmed to do only what humans instruct them to do, there likely would be no major issues. There is, however, another extremely important question that needs to be resolved: safety.

On 3 February, during a humanoid robot performance organised by a tenant at CapitaLand Mall in Chengdu, a robot moving towards the crowd startled and knocked down an elderly person who tried to avoid it. Both fell to the ground, and the elderly person reportedly suffered from soft tissue contusions. This incident highlights that there is still progress to be made in the development and management of robot applications.

The rules for human-robot interaction not only require that humans must always be in command, but also that robots should ideally possess human-like thinking, emotion and behaviour. In these respects, there has thus far been little progress. 

Robots still behave in a mechanical, rigid, numb, clumsy and slow manner, and are therefore seen as lacking the “human touch”. Thus, if robots dominated the stage at the Spring Festival Gala, it is naturally hard to speak of any real “New Year’s atmosphere”.

The pursuit of “human touch” is one of the key expectations of robots by humanity. Yet, if robots were to possess the same emotions, expressions and personalities as humans, even if they had one of the 16 personality types identified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), would people then become afraid?

Robots lack the “human touch” because they do not possess even the most basic facial expressions, such as the six common ones of happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust and fear. Then there are compound expressions, such as delight (happiness and surprise) and distraught (sadness and anger), among the 15 types. In addition, humans have over 100 micro-expressions, and only humans can read them.

There has been a breakthrough in the facial expressions of humanoid robots. During the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, the “Grandma’s Favourite” skit featured a bionic humanoid robot whose facial expressions and movements were a perfect replica of actress Cai Ming. Its lifelike facial expressions were so realistic, drawing repeated gasps from the audience. The most frequently sent on-screen comment was simply: “Ah?”

Although it is still possible to tell the real Cai Ming from the robot, some viewers could not immediately distinguish between the two and felt a sense of uncanniness and fear. 

Moreover, as early as May 2025, a Chinese company launched a new generation female bionic robot named “Xiao Nuo”, which has near-human facial expressions and highly humanlike interactive abilities. Thanks to an ultra-flexible design with 32 degrees of freedom, Xiao Nuo is able to accurately simulate human facial muscle movements and achieve more than 200 micro-expression changes from smiling to frowning. It is able to mimic more than 90% of human facial expressions, making it almost indistinguishable from a real person.

When it becomes difficult to distinguish between humans and robots, the problems multiply and become more serious. The biggest issues are deception and crime, be it in finance or criminal activity. Humanoid replicas could be used to defraud and commit offences in the real world. This could raise societal costs as a whole, especially for the judicial system.

In Journey to the West, the episode of the “true and false Monkey King” depicted the Six-Eared Macaque impersonating Sun Wukong. Because the antagonist’s appearance and abilities were identical to Sun Wukong’s — and was equally devoted to protecting Tang Sanzang — Tang Sanzang, Zhu Bajie, Sha Wujing, Guanyin Bodhisattva and even the Ten Kings of Hell could not tell them apart. In the end, only the Buddha could discern the real from the fake. 

This implies that once robots as lifelike as humans are designed and manufactured, with only the designers able to identify them — or not — human society would then truly have entered an era in which robots run rampant, and humans would no longer be able to control and command them.

Hence, robots that are truly favoured by people should not only be able to do the dirty work for them, but should also be capable of emotional interaction with people. Most crucially, they must bear clear markers so that people can easily recognise them. 

Although human-like, they cannot be overly so, and must certainly not surpass humans to resemble demons or deities. This should be a key principle for allowing humanoid robots to enter the market.

Related: [Video] How robots stole the show at China’s Spring Festival Gala | [Big read] Humanoids at the door: Can we really trust robots in daily life?