Feeling a little terrified about how quickly technology seems to be sidelining humanity? Try watching a robot sprint straight into a wall. It's hilarious.

In recent videos showing machines on two legs running track in Beijing, some succeeded in breaking Usain Bolt's 100-meter record.

And some slammed full tilt into a barrier, collapsing and reeling like drunks. More than one flopped backward in a cartoonish froth of sparks.

The World Humanoid Robot Games was intended to showcase a field evolving in literal leaps, with robots high-jumping, boxing and cheerleading. More important, the exhibition was a source of fresh material for my new favorite genre of entertainment: robots failing spectacularly at basic human feats.

It's content that delivers pure physical comedy, guilt-free schadenfreude and a reassuring feeling of superiority.

Like when a weightlifter staggered under a puny-looking barbell, then dropped it, tripped over it and landed face first. It got better when a pair of solemn-looking humans carried the competitor away on a stretcher.

It's tougher to laugh about how much faster a large language model could have written this article. There's nothing entertaining in footage of swarming war drones. Data centers are mushrooming, so numerous and monolithic they seem abstract, until one starts materializing on the Conodoguinet Creek in Pennsylvania, where I grew up.

Robots struggling to cosplay people, on the other hand, are the ideal straw man for my anxieties about human obsolescence.

"If a washing machine breaks, nobody laughs," said Dennis Hong, an engineering professor at UCLA. But when a delivery bot drives off a pier, or a humanoid faceplants while botching a dance move, people are seeing more than slapstick humor. "There may also be a little bit of satisfaction: 'See? Humans are still better.'"

Even Hong, who's working tirelessly to improve robots, finds joy in videos with titles like "Ranking Funniest Clanker Fails."

"Oh, I laugh. Some of them are genuinely hilarious-if it is NOT our robot," he said.

As director of UCLA's Robotics and Mechanics Laboratory, Hong is rethinking robots for the age of A.I. Traditional robotics called for machines that were mechanically predictable and easy to model. New data-driven systems allow engineers to experiment with designs, controls and materials they previously wouldn't consider.

Hong said he urges students to embrace failure as a learning tool-ideally while using a safety harness and cushions on the floor.

The uncanny physics of robot crack ups is part of what makes them addictive. Artificial limbs programmed for specific movements end up flailing in surprisingly chaotic ways. Humanoid bodies flop with no self-protection reflex.

It's like a freaky evolution of the human-mishap extravaganzas that progressed from "America's Funniest Home Videos" to "Jackass" to subreddits like Whatcouldgowrong to viral clips crashing my algorithm.

Changliu Liu, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, has a YouTube failbot compilation she likes to show students. It starts with a humanoid descending some steps with apparent confidence-then missing a step, toppling like a tree and losing its head on impact.

The laughs keep coming, especially when a little bot in a soccer jersey whiffs a kick and splats on its back. She uses the clips not just to diagnose what went wrong, but to consider what could have gone worse in a real-life environment.

One of Liu's specialties is human-robot safety. There's a growing need for certification standards as humanoids venture beyond programmed stunts into the unpredictable world of people, she said. "It is when the robot gets out of those stages, when they get in the crowd, then problems happen."

Which brings up my weakness for videos of rogue activity at malls and street festivals in places where humanoids are less expensive to make and deploy, especially China.

In one, a stubby robot sporting an electric-blue wig shows off some spins and thrusts for spectators, then clips a kid with a kick to the stomach. In another, an office bot sends its human co-workers scrambling by suddenly aiming kung-fu moves in their direction.

Judging from the comments ("You're laughing now, but wait til they come for you"), this content is part of a growing public-relations problem for the field.

"I do think there has been a shift," Hong said. "Robots used to be mostly something people were fascinated by."

Folks once eager for the butlers of the future are now wary of potential attackers and job thieves. That's a bummer for the engineers developing humanoids with miraculous applications, like autonomous disaster-response bots.

Liu said she's seeing that anxiety play out at demonstration events where some of the young people she's trying to inspire are more interested in tricking the machines.

"Once they do something to break the robot they feel very proud of themselves," she said.

That sent me back to the video of my all-time favorite failbot, the "Billie Jean" machine. What starts as a decent impersonation of a Michael Jackson impersonator goes sideways when the gyrating bot stumbles on some stairs, then recovers, only to slam completely on the steps and lie still, as if dead from embarrassment.

Maybe it was the audience's silent reaction to the dancer bombing. Or the fact that it was wearing a T-shirt without pants. But something got to me, and I felt a pang of empathy for the humanoid being dragged off the stage by its human handler.

I wonder what that robot is up to right now.