At Summer Davos in communist China, where does one person’s obessesion with personifying robots for personal & professional pursuits end and the potentially negative effects that those psychological projections have on the rest of society begin?
Our acceptance of robots will be based on our feelings towards them rather than their actual functions, according to a presentation at the World Economic Forum (WEF) “Summer Davos” meeting in communist China.
Personifying robots took center stage today at the 17th WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions (AMNC), aka “Summer Davos,” in Dalian, China.
Giving the keynote presentation during the session called “Robots in Rhythm with Us,” Atonaton founder Madeline Gannon addressed the fears and anxieties that humans have over the coming robot invasion.
For her, “Automation reminds us of our own potential for obsolescence,” but her silver lining is that automation is not inevitable but rather intentional, and that at any moment, “We can decide to choose different.”
“Robotics and AI are beginning to merge. You may see terms like ‘physical AI, embodied AI,’ and really this is about putting intelligent software into physical bodies — into robot bodies”
Madeline Gannon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2026
“Automation is not inevitable; it is intentional”
Madeline Gannon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2026
At this year’s Summer Davos, Gannon made no attempt to conceal that she’s a complete robophile — personifying robots at every opporunity by giving them human pronouns like “she” and terms of endearment like “companion” and even “friend.”
And those types of psychological projections and personifications are her keys for human acceptance and adoption of robots.
It’s not about what these soulless, empathy-lacking lackeys do or don’t do for us, but rather how we feel about them.
“What I think we’re missing in the robotics world, and in the technology world in general, is that the future is not really going to be about function — what the robots do — it’s really going to be about feeling the experience of these machines”
Madeline Gannon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2026
“For mass adoption, for mass acceptance, how they make us feel is going to be more important. As the hardware gets commoditized, as the models get commoditized, the only differentiating factor is going to be the experience of these machines”
Madeline Gannon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2026
In her Summer Davos talk, Gannon referred to a robot as a “good friend” of hers. This long, rectangular robot has been given a name, Mimus.
And according to Gannon, this robot is female, and “SHE was BORN in Birmingham at a factory.”
Why personify a robot? Why give it a name? Why say it is a she, when it is not a woman? Why say it was born when it was manufactured in a factory?
It’s all about psychological projection, and Gannon acknowledges this.
The Atonaton founder relayed the story about how she brought the robot to a museum in London for a six-month HOLIDAY — something that only humans do — so that the robot could SEE the visitors.
“We automatically begin to project our lifeforce back onto this machine and reflect back onto us […] Human-in-the-loop is what brings this machine back to life”
Madeline Gannon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2026
Gannon justified personifying AI robots by saying that’s what humans do through a phenomenon called “pareidolia,” in which we project life onto something that isn’t living — like seeing faces in inanimate objects, or certain shapes in clouds, or giving human narratives to something that isn’t human.
She would expand upon this notion of human psychological projection onto robots to include her own projections that are now so deeply imbedded within her, that she still believes that she gave her toddler daughter a friend when she put an AI-infused mechanical rod on a swing next to her daughter.
“These robots, they don’t feel. They don’t have emotions, but they’re structured in a way to elicit our emotions. They’re mirrors”
Madeline Gannon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2026
But it’s all smoke and mirrors. Projection is mirroring. Narcissists and toxic people do this all the time in order to manipulate people.
Conversely, well-intentioned people mirror other people out of respect, out of trying to understand the other, or out of their own discomfort and social awkwardness.
But where does one person’s obessesion with trying personify robots for personal and professional pursuits end and the potentially negative effects that those psychological projections have on the rest of society begin?
Gannon wants robots that will last longer than human lifetimes. She wants the same robots to be in operation for decades in order to recognize and care for not just her, but for her daughter, and her supposed daughter’s daughters.
“I want these machines to recognize my daughter as she grows up. She’s six. She’ll be 16; she’ll be 60. Potentially, these things will be here when I’m not, and I want my robots to have a friendly face, so I’m working through those engineering challenges — both my daughter and my daughter’s daughter — for how these systems will begin to recognize her”
Madeline Gannon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2026
It’s obvious that Gannon is passionate about her work, that she is incredibly smart, that she’s extremely dedicated to her craft, and that she is head-over-heels in love with her daughter.
She’s also projecting her own biases onto not just robotics but all of society.
Gannon calls a robot SHE and says her daughter will have daughters.
Gannon says that humans will accept robots because of our feelings towards them, but she doesn’t take into account that there are some humans out there that see through this illusion.
A machine is a machine. Next, you’ll want to make it more like a human through mirrors and mimicry. Then you’ll want to give it rights. Then all of humanity is lost in an identity crisis of philosophical, legal, and ethical complications.
“AI immigrants will have some dubious political loyalties. They’re likely to be loyal not to your country, but to some corporation or government across the ocean […] Will your country recognize the AI immigrants as legal persons?”
Yuval Noah Harari, WEF Annual Meeting, January 2026
My rumba vaccuum cleaner, who’s obviously FEMALE, has been my savior in keeping the floor clean, and we need to protect HER rights — and those of HER manufacturer — to continually evolve by giving HER a voice through Large Language Models and sensors, so that one day SHE can truly express HERSELF, find religion, and make HER own decisions autonomously — including the right to vote!
That’s one exagerrated example of where this could be heading, but it’s an interesting thought experiment, nonetheless, as to how far these conversations about personifying robots and projecting the human psyche upon them.
As for Gannon, when the COVID lockdowns forced humans into isolation, her maternal instincts were to provide her daughter with a robot “companion” — a “friend” that would occupy a swing next to her, as if that would give her a “form of normalcy.”
“It became very practical during the pandemic when [my daughter] didn’t have very many kids to play with, and so I built a companion for her, so that she could have some form of normalcy”
Madeline Gannon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2026
“It’s also like a really cool origin story, right? ‘I was born in a warehouse in Pittsburgh, and my first friend was a robot!’ That’s a lasting gift, hopefully”
Madeline Gannon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2026
Projection, projection everywhere, and all the brains did shrink!
Projection, projection everywhere, nor any a thought to think!
Forget the fact that it was governments and corporations that mandated unscientific lockdowns that stunted the social growth of our youth, destroyed people’s livelihoods, and gave the rich and powerful even more influence over our daily lives!
Forget that Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted to making up the six-foot, two-meter social distancing measures out of thin air.
Forget that Pfizer admitted that its so-called COVID vaccines were never tested for transmissibility and that the “no jab, no job” or vaccine passport mandates were never going to slow the spread and were completely unjustified for shutting down the entire economy for years on end.
Forget all of that!
Because the next time they do it, those same powerful interests can just shove one of their own proprietary robots into the playpens of babes, so that our children can grow up having affections and emotional connections to the artificially manufactured and patented products of governments and corporations.
What an interesting debate that could’ve taken place had the WEF brought back a speaker from last year’s Summer Davos meeting!
There, Future Explorer Society founder Chang Dong-Seon said that children who were brought up around robots might not be able to distinguish the difference between humans and non-humans and lose their abilities to socialize.
“If you look at studies of young people, then they don’t distinguish non-human robots with humans […] They might think they really have feelings, show sympathy, and think of the other non-human beings like they’re human”
Chang Dong-Seon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2025
But it’s not just younger people who will be affected from being around robots.
Dong-Seon also said that the more we interact with robots throughout our lives, the more we may lose our ability to socialize normally with other humans because our brains would be rewired to treat other people as if they were machines.
“If you are isolated and if you don’t interact with other human beings, over time your brain loses the ability to read social cues from other beings […] if you interact with robots, a lot of people see that you might actually become very aggressive, abusive […] and your non-human actions might convey also to humans when you interact“
Chang Dong-Seon, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, June 2025
Gannon believes that our acceptance and adoption of robots — which are built by corporations and run on AI models that they developed — is just a matter of how they will make us humans feel.
She acknowledges that this is all just a projection, mirrors and mimicry, but based purely on this short WEF session, she is living out this fantasy as if her projection were actually reflected in the hearts and minds of the over eight billion people living on the planet.
At the 2026 WEF Annual Meeting in January, Elon Musk predicted that he’d be selling humanoid robots commercially by the end of 2027 as that’s when they’d be highly reliable, safe, and have a great range of function.
With the end of 2027 being the projected date for the start of humanoid robot sales, Musk predicted that eventually everyone on earth would have a robot.
“I’d say by the end of next year, I think, we’ll be selling humanoid robots to the public […] That’s when we’re confident that [..] the range of functionality is also very high. You can basically ask it to do anything you’d like”
Elon Musk, WEF Annual Meeting, January 2026
These robots would “saturate all human needs” like taking care of kids, pets, and the elderly.
And just like with mobile devices, there will one day be more humanoid robots than people, according to Musk.
“My prediction is that there will be more robots than people”
Elon Musk, WEF Annual Meeting, January 2026
This year’s 17th annual World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions takes place from June 23-25 in communist China.
According to the AMNC overview, “The meeting will bring together leaders from business, government, civil society, academia, and the entrepreneurial community to explore how innovation and emerging technologies can unlock new growth models and drive positive economic momentum. It will also offer insights into the economic outlook of key emerging markets, with a particular focus on China and the broader Asian region.”
You can check out the WEF website for the entire list of panels and speakers.
Image Source: Screenshot of the WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions session on “Robots in Rhythm with Us” June 23, 2026
