BEIJING — It was not even close as a bright red Chinese humanoid named “Lightning” lived up to its name in a half-marathon pitting humans against robots, smoking its competition on Sunday

A humanoid robot built by Chinese firm Unitree Robotics has reportedly reached a peak running speed of 10 meters per second, roughly 22.4 miles per hour, during controlled testing. If accurate, that puts a two-legged machine within arm’s reach of the average speed Usain Bolt maintained during his world-record 100-meter dash.

When researchers asked more than 1,000 Americans to assign colors to robots according to the robot’s job, they found that biases familiar from the human workplace resurfaced—and that the people