Humanoid robots are here- should humans be worried?

March 05, 2024 (MLN): Efficiency-focused global industrial giants are racing to save every penny to remain competitive. The quest to do better is always pushing innovation, entrepreneurship and technological revolution.

Until labour was cheap, their "nakhras" were endured through unions and pretentious employee-employer relationships. It's changing now. 

The affordable labour workforce is scarce in developed countries seeing a growing population of senior citizens, increased pressure to up minimum wage and high skills jobs paying people higher per hour wages and flexible work-life balance.

If the cost of manufacturing a robot is cheaper, affordable and a value proposition the adaption will spread like wildfire. It will be the next big thing.

Companies like Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, 1X technology, Apptronik, Figure AI etc are among others working on the quest to make robots useful in everyday life.

If not robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence would surely displace jobs. These will be high-skill, value-adding and globally demanded expertise from now onwards in the new leg of growth. 

Countries should spend part of their education budget on promoting industry-wide linkages with academia and encourage R&D by hiring top global overseas talent.

A systematic overhaul is needed nowadays to push the boundaries of development otherwise generations will only vanish working on farmlands and it will be a tragedy only to blame policymakers for. 

The author is an independent economic analyst and writes on Twitter and Linkedin.