Artificial intelligence-powered robots are emerging in Silicon Valley. If some industry experts are right, they could help solve the global labor shortage.
company likes Tesla, Amazon, Microsoft and Nvidia Billions of dollars have been invested in the development of “humanoid” robots. These machines usually stand on two legs and are designed to perform human tasks.
Currently, they are deployed in warehouses. But proponents say the possibilities extend far beyond fulfillment centers. These robots could eventually work alongside people in homes and offices.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been one of the leading evangelists. The electric car maker is betting on its Optimus robot, which Musk believes “will change the world to a greater extent than cars.”
During the company’s first-quarter earnings call, Musk said Optimus could push its market value to $25 trillion and be equivalent to “a majority of Tesla’s long-term value.” Amazon supports Agility Robotics and has deployed its Digit robots in distribution centers.
Analysis by Goldman Sachs shows that the humanoid robot market will expand to US$38 billion in the next 20 years. The company predicts these robots will become the next “must-have” device, not unlike smartphones or electric cars. Goldman Sachs also said humanoid robots could be “critical to manufacturing and hazardous jobs, but they will also help with elder care and fill labor shortages in factories.”
Artificial Intelligence Improvement
These humanoid robots have been around for decades. But there’s renewed optimism in the industry thanks to recent leaps in artificial intelligence. The same technology behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT enables bots to interpret language and commands and make decisions about how to act. These machines use computer vision, similar to humans, to train on real-world scenarios.
“Robotics is where artificial intelligence meets reality,” Henrik Christensen, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego, told CNBC. “This results in some very interesting new combinations that I don’t think we could have imagined even five years ago. imagine.”
The global labor shortage is another key factor behind the recent interest in humanoid robots. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there are approximately 8.5 million jobs in the United States alone. The gap is particularly acute in manufacturing, where Goldman Sachs estimates a labor shortage of 500,000 people, rising to 2 million by 2030.
“We started with what we call boring, dirty, dangerous tasks where there’s a huge labor shortage right now and there’s no one to do the work,” said Jeff Cardenas, CEO and co-founder of Robotics. Startup Apptronik.
Competition is global. China has dominated the industry, surpassing Japan in 2013 to become the world’s largest installer of industrial robots, and now accounts for more than half of the global total, according to a Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Index report.
“The Chinese market is the largest market in the world,” said Tom Andersson, chief analyst at Styleintelligence, adding that the only company in the West with products similar to those produced in China is Amazon. “But Chinese companies are catching up quickly.”
Still, there are obstacles. The machines are expensive, and there are safety concerns about letting robots run free in factories.
“When it comes to mass adoption, or even anything like mass adoption, I think we’re going to have to wait quite a while. Probably at least ten years,” Anderson said. “Sorry, Musk.”
Watch the entire video to learn more about the rise of humanoid robots.
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