In 2025, the American startup 1X introduced NEO, a domestic robot with ambitious promises: autonomous household tasks performed with precision and intelligence. The video was polished. The narrative was compelling. Later, it became clear that a significant portion of the demonstration relied on remote human control.
The technology wasn’t fake. But its maturity was performative.
It was an announcement of the future — not evidence of infrastructure ready at scale.
This week, China presented something different: humanoid robots performing a choreographed Kung Fu routine alongside human artists, broadcast nationwide during the Spring Festival Gala.
This was not a promotional video. It was a public demonstration of technical capability.
The difference between the two moments is not aesthetic. It lies in the stage of system maturity.
From Perception to Strategic Realignment
For decades, Chinese products were associated with low quality and imitation. That narrative became culturally embedded in Western markets. Yet the past fifteen years have revealed a different pattern: when a technology becomes strategically important to the state — such as electric vehicles, semiconductors, or batteries — China aligns capital, supply chains, research, and industrial execution toward a common objective.
Humanoid robotics now appears to be entering that same cycle.
What may look like spectacle could, in reality, be rehearsal for scale.
Historically, markets make a recurring mistake: underestimating early-stage technologies because they do not conform to the dominant aesthetic of innovation. But acceleration rarely begins polished.
The End of the Linear Workflow
During Brazil’s Carnival season, Figma announced a feature that allows production code — including code generated via Anthropic Claude Code — to be converted into editable artifacts on the design canvas.
Practically speaking, this alters a paradigm that has held for over two decades.
The traditional sequence was:
Design → Development → Production.
With the rise of generative AI, we began to see:
Prompt → Code → Interface.
Now, a more structural layer is emerging:
Code → Canvas → Collaboration → Code again.
This circularity is not trivial.
It reduces the time between conception, validation, and implementation. It brings design closer to real production environments. It demands new organizational competencies.
More than a feature, it represents a reorganization of workflow architecture.
The Problem of “Manual Mode”
In Brazil, there is an expression associated with Carnival culture: “dança da manivela” — literally, the “crank dance.” It evokes the image of turning something manually, repeatedly, in a mechanical rhythm.
Applied to contemporary design, it becomes a metaphor for risk.
Teams that continue operating exclusively in manual cycles — screen by screen, adjustment by adjustment — ignore the fact that the market is increasingly structured around automated iteration loops.
The question is not whether designers will be replaced.
The question is whether the operational model will be.
When leaders repeat the comforting mantra that “AI won’t replace you,” they often overlook a crucial nuance: AI may not replace the professional, but it can replace large portions of the execution that once defined that professional’s competitive advantage.
That distinction reshapes team structures, roles, and expectations.
Leadership, Infrastructure, and Competitive Advantage
Recent history demonstrates that markets are not dominated by the best narrative, but by the strongest infrastructure.
Robots controlled remotely are theater.
Robots executing at scale are systems.
Likewise, AI-generated prototypes are interesting.
But integrated pipelines connecting code, design, and automation in continuous loops are infrastructure.
The distinction between the two determines who gains relevance when market cycles accelerate.
2026 Has Begun
In Brazil, there is a saying that the year only truly begins after Carnival. If that holds true, then 2026 begins now.
The strategic question is not whether AI will replace designers.
The question is:
Are design leaders reorganizing their workflows to operate in automated loops, or are they still turning the crank?
Because in 2026, those who insist on operating in manual mode will not be replaced by robots.
They will be outpaced by teams who understood the loop earlier.
Markets, much like crises, have a way of revealing quickly who built theater — and who built infrastructure.
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