They could have done so much with this

The boys ability did not come into play until his neck monitor was swapped out with the version that communicated with the robots main network when being scanned by the machine. Not that many people up to that point had the scanning done, let alone were allowed to walk away with the unique equipment still intact. So he was in a unique position to gain access to their network and control it. Who knows, maybe there were a certain small percentage of humans who could do the same if everyone had been given the same opportunity.