Met Gala, Southwest Airlines, and the End of Ask Jeeves: Kris Abel's Week in Tech

Ask Jeeves shut down May 1st. Kris Abel says it was built around the same idea that AI is now executing, asking questions and getting answers, but it ran out of runway before the technology caught up to the concept. That is the context for the rest of the week's tech news, which involved humanoid robots showing up in two very different places. At the Met Gala hotel setup for Alexander Wang, photographers waiting for models got an Agibot humanoid Android instead. It staggered out and the crowd reacted accordingly. Around the same time, an events company could not get its Agibot robot into a Southwest Airlines cargo hold due to weight restrictions, bought it a ticket, walked it onto the plane, and sat it in a seat. A one-hour delay followed while technicians confirmed the lithium-ion battery was safe to fly. It cleared and the robot rode to Chicago. Kris Abel notes it was the same model as the Met Gala robot, different unit, different city. Topics: humanoid robot news, Ask Jeeves closed, Agibot Met Gala, robot airline passenger, tech news GUEST: Kris Abel | realkrisabel.com Originally aired on 2026-05-05