The robots are coming, so where does that leave us?

Robots used to be a cute novelty for companies, to briefly parade on stage or to greet presidents for public relations purposes. Now, functional, humanoid robots are getting to work.

We’ve certainly seen some circuitry reboots to the robotics space in recent years – Tesla’s Optimus bot, Boston Dynamics’ backflipping parkour sensation Atlas, and the world’s most expressive humanoid robot in Ameca, are ones that quickly come to mind.

The most high-profile buzz of all just came out, when US-based robotics company Figure emerged from stealth mode and revealed its partnership with the poster boy of artificial intelligence and chatbots, OpenAI. This was big because the company behind ChatGPT had yet to publicize backing for any one of the myriad robots being developed.

Figure clearly has some heavyweight supporters betting on their bot’s potential, as they received $675 million in VC funding from a prolific group that includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, and chip-maker, Nvidia.

ChatGPT got a body and Figure 01 was revealed, a humanoid robot equipped with artificial intelligence and computer vision. In a demo, when asked what it could “see”, Figure 01 nailed the visual recognition test by accurately describing a red apple, a drying rack with dishes, and the person who asked the question – all through its beady camera eyes. Uncanny, yes, but we’ve seen this before when Google showed off how their AI model Gemini could recognize items placed in front of it (although it was later discovered that some slick editing had slightly exaggerated its capabilities).

But then, the man in the demo asks, "Can I have something to eat?" and Figure 01 smoothly grabs the apple (the only edible item) and hands it to the man. It then proceeds to throw some trash in the bin, while explaining that the man got the apple because it was the only thing that was editable.

When questioned about its performance, Figure 01 shared a chilled self-assessment in a human-like tone: “I think I did pretty well. The apple found its new owner, the trash is gone, and the tableware is right where it belongs.”

Clever, bot.

According to Brett Adcock, the founder of Figure, Figure 01 has onboard cameras that feed the VLM data that helps it "understand" the scene in front of it, allowing the robot to smoothly interact with the human in front of it. What sets Figure 01 apart from previous robot iterations is that it can learn and grow thanks to reinforcement learning, a machine learning (ML) capability that allows an AI-driven system to learn through trial and error using feedback from its actions, much like humans do. Networked robots can also share knowledge and learning in real-time with one another, meaning that if one bot learns how to assemble a chair, all other robots interfaced with this would learn this too.

Adcock's ultimate goal? To train a super-advanced AI system to control billions of humanoid robots, potentially revolutionizing multiple industries and societal constructs.

The question, then, is where does that leave humanity? When AI becomes intelligent, and when humanoid robots eventually rival or exceed our mobility and productivity, where will we, as the human species, stand in the grand scheme of things?

Let’s investigate…

Machines have been displacing humans for centuries

Obviously, robots are going to continue to take some human jobs – machines have made jobs obsolete for centuries. The spinning jenny replaced weavers, buttons displaced elevator operators, and the Internet drove travel agencies out of business. One study estimates that about 400,000 jobs were lost to automation in U.S. factories from 1990 to 2007.

What's less clear is whether the overall economic and employment picture for humans will be bleaker or brighter as a result.

$50,000: that’s how much it costs in the US to hire a minimum wage blue-collar worker annually, according to Robohub, a nonprofit robotics organization. When it becomes cheaper to purchase a robot that can do the same job (in 2022, Musk said Optimus would cost less than $20,000, though the controversial CEO is also known for making some rather unrealistic claims), companies will be left with a difficult ethical decision.

It’s not just blue collar jobs that will lose out

Some white-collar roles, like doctors, are already being assisted by robots for surgery, or being replaced almost entirely by them thanks to robots with higher levels of autonomy. A robot radiologist sees more cases during its training than a human during their entire career, and scores better in its diagnoses.  A well-programmed (or ‘trained’, through machine learning), robot accountant does not make mistakes a human makes. Robots might threaten your job, because humans can be beaten in every repetitive task.

In 2022, McDonalds rolled out an experimental fully-automated branch in Texas, posing an interesting conundrum for the fast food industry. In 2016, Japanese lettuce production company Spread launched the world's first robot-run farm, intended to harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce daily.

Within the public sector, we’ve seen the New York Police Department deploy surveillance robots last year across the city subway to monitor illegal activity in the place of human officers (which they later removed from service).

However, deploying robots to replace human jobs is not as clear-cut as we might be led to think. Japan’s Henn na Hotel introduced robots to its workforce in 2016, only to pull most of them from service in 2019 after plenty of complaints from customers and staff. The NYPD’s subway bot? It was met with lots of criticism and negative blowback from New Yorkers who believed the police department was simply using these machines to monitor them.

A new social contract?

Many in the tech industry, from Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg have spoken out about a basic income as a tool to protect those who lose their jobs. In a 2017 interview, Bill Gates advocated for a ‘robot tax’, explaining that companies taxed for using robotics could still come out ahead, given how much money and time automation could save their businesses in the long run.

“The human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory has his income taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level”.

Lessons from history show that technological change doesn’t always affect employment in the way people believe

General-purpose humanoid robots are still some years away, but we could be expecting a billion of them among us by the 2040s, if Midjourney founder David Holz is correct in his estimates, a number that was later supported by Musk too.

While there has been a lot of fear about the result of humanoid robots being developed, from job loss to surveillance risks and more, it helps to view these robots like any other innovation. Think of them as a car, or a smartphone -- tools that could help us lead more productive, meaningful lives.

Wendy Pan, an analyst for Macquarie, sees humanoid robots as the next logical step in a long line of technological advances: "The car helped shorten people's commute time. I see the purpose as similar for humanoid robots: to shorten people's time spent on housework, making people's lives easier and more convenient.”

These general-purpose robots will be able to assist doctors, provide home care to the elderly, undergo dangerous rescue operations, automate menial factory jobs that provide little in terms of stimulation and pay, and much, much more.

What most don’t realize is that just because we could reach a point where a robot could be a teacher, a secretary, or a chef, doesn’t necessarily mean we will always opt for them. We are already living in an era where we crave human connection. With robots prevalent among us, this could mean that we will more actively seek human connection in our personal and professional lives. A teacher is more than the syllabus they teach. A chef is more than just a person who follows a recipe. A secretary is not just a person who manages appointments.

In a nutshell: robots lack emotional intelligence.

Humanity brings something special and unique to the table, and in an era where we will seek more human connection, perhaps this means that the value of the human being will only grow.

Still, the advent of general-purpose robots raises some important questions:

• How can workers whose jobs are displaced by robots be retrained or reskilled for new roles?

• What tasks can be automated to free up human workers for more creative or strategic responsibilities?

• How can we redesign jobs to take advantage of the unique strengths of both humans and robots, creating synergistic human-robot teams?

• What are the implications of using robots for tasks that involve decision-making or interactions with vulnerable populations, such as healthcare or customer service?

• In an age of robots and AI fusing together, how will these technologies develop alongside us? How will humans have to evolve and level up to match their capabilities? Perhaps human-machine hybrids are our future?