China is apparently now leading the way in robotics tech, so much so that it's changing the way even capitalism works!
According to the International Federation of Robotics, China’s been the biggest market for industrial robots since 2013, accounting for more than half of new installations.
And this has all been solidly booked by the Chinese government, with plenty of money but also long-term investment planning.
And now China is leading the charge on developing humanoid robots, which, if progressed, could take over a lot more, well, human jobs!
Robots stumble over jobs that people find easy. There’s a wider problem: digital brains are clever, but making them act in the real world is a challenge...
“Physical AI” is the big hurdle. ChatGPT or similar tech can read, write, and understand language by tapping into giant pools of data online. But robots don’t get that shortcut. They have to learn by bumping into real-world messiness—no massive internet archive to learn from.
Right now, Chin may well have the edge with physical AI, but many tasks are nowhere near close to being taken over by robots, so there's plenty of opportunity for other countries to step-up too.
Even if robots have taken over 90% of current jobs by 2040, or whenever, I am sure us humans will think of other things we can do to make ourselves 'useful' - I mean already about 90% of jobs are pointless anyway, right?!?
Or we'll just end up serving the robots. Could be more palatable than serving the wealthy in a more direct way.
