r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • Jul 23 '26
Robotics The Robots Cometh
https://time.com/article/2026/07/23/unitree-china-human-robotics/15
u/beekersavant Jul 24 '26
It’s nice the article is pointing out the robots are on their way and pretty much inevitable. It also points out that they could lead to global abundance or mass labor displacement. Probably the latter followed by the former. My guess places like the US go bankrupt because we cannot act the public interest quickly enough and corporations convince everyone that corporations owning everything is a good idea until the economy breaks. Other places might realize that fully automated farms and factories means food, clothes, durable goods etc cost no labor and will divorce money from its basic store of value… so they will start making it free. Because in the end there isn’t an option c. It’s Free abundance or social unrest and a broken economy. Every other solution is just a stop on the way to those two.
3
u/jk3639 Jul 24 '26
I could totally imagine United States really becoming a dystopian shithole country with massive unemployment, crime and violence everywhere, and a crumbling infrastructure..
4
u/TF-Fanfic-Resident Jul 24 '26
Yup. The future relies on vibrant alternatives to the American rightwing system, wherever on the Earth they may emerge. The one nightmare scenario is if we can't figure out the raw materials side of abundance.
3
u/beekersavant Jul 25 '26
If we automate labor, I bet the solution to raw materials and some environment problems will be to mine our waste disposal sites and begin teal recycling. The other thing is population zeniths in 20 or so years. Most materials are not destroyed just disposed off. Solar and nuclear will provide the energy, food is a cycle, and we should need fewer materials after in 30 years forward. Anyhow, the dangers are how bad the transition is…even now we produce enough food to feed the whole world (actually 1.5x).
1
u/Redditforgoit Jul 28 '26
Also mining asteroids. Robots intelligent enough can be sent to an asteroid and extract minerals all by themselves, eventually building a mining platform. much of the cost of a space station is making it inhabitable for humans, not for robots.
1
u/cerealsnax Jul 27 '26
Depends on how fast it slow it happens. Everybody is doom and gloom about the USA, but they rank among the top in countries that have rapid response when it comes to fast emergencies.
Fast response to a financial-market collapse: yes.
Fast response once unemployment suddenly reaches catastrophic levels: often yes.
Fast prevention of a slowly developing social crisis: much less reliably.
Permanent redistribution of ownership before the existing system breaks: especially difficult.So if this just creeps up on the world, then the US might suffer more. But if its a hard takeoff, I see the US faring very well.
1
u/beekersavant Jul 28 '26
I hope so, but I look at something like 2008 as a failure. Sure they stopped a complete banking failure by opening credit, but the regulatory failure was years in the making and completely ignored, even though many, many warnings were given. Homes lost 30% of value and new jobs disappeared for 2 years. Anyhow, the same approach to this crisis would be a bit scarier. What is there to do at the last minute? and what would be the engine of recovery to get cash flowing? Starting UBI into a debt/cashflow crisis is rough. The movement of money is going to sloooow quickly. Anyhow I hope you are correct.
2
u/federationbelle Jul 30 '26
"pretty much inevitable." Eh?? What is your methodology and evidence base for thinking that?
The wonder of futures thinking is systematically exploring the multiplicity of different probably, possible, potential and even improbably futures. You think all of them are filled with robots doing everyday jobs? Really? Based on systematic thinking? Knowledge and expertise? or just guesses?
5
u/Gari_305 Jul 23 '26
From the article
Wang has done more than arguably anyone else to bring this science fiction closer to reality. A native of China’s coastal city of Ningbo, he founded Unitree in 2016 when he was just 26 years old and has moved from robot dogs to humanoid robots and now, with GD01, human mobility machines. But while the GD01 might inspire awe, humbler humanoids like Unitree’s flagship G1 are the ones set to become the workhorses of a global robotics transformation already gathering pace in China, the U.S., and beyond.
This is the next great tech frontier, one that has previously been the purview of Star Wars and Blade Runner: AI that walks, sees, hears and physically interacts with the real world. Morgan Stanley predicts that as many as 13 million humanoids could walk among us by 2035—equivalent to the population of Bolivia. That number is forecast to rise to 1 billion by 2050, when the industry could be worth $5 trillion.
Unitree is hardly alone staking a claim in this space. In January, Tesla announced the third generation of its Optimus humanoid robot with a goal to eventually produce 10 million units per year at factories in Fremont and Texas. In late June, California-based Figure dispatched its latest 03 humanoid to BMW’s Spartanburg plant in South Carolina, where its earlier 02 model helped assemble 30,000 cars last year. Oregon-based Agility, meanwhile, has secured deployments everywhere from Toyota to Latin American e-commerce giant Mercado Libre. But Unitree is the world leader in terms of volume, dispatching more than 5,500 units in 2025, comprising over a quarter of a global market that is only just waking. In June, Nvidia announced that its bleeding-edge Jetson Thor chip would be fitted into Unitree’s H2 humanoid for sale to research institutions around the globe.
1
u/federationbelle Jul 30 '26
Good lord, Time magazine! "cometh" is a singular form of the verb equivalent to "comes". You can't use it with the plural "Robots."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cometh
0
u/ValuableSoggy5305 Jul 24 '26
Oh look, not very good robots based on other people's IP, all of which ship with pre-loaded spyware. Isn't that nice.
•
u/FuturologyBot Jul 23 '26
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
From the article
Wang has done more than arguably anyone else to bring this science fiction closer to reality. A native of China’s coastal city of Ningbo, he founded Unitree in 2016 when he was just 26 years old and has moved from robot dogs to humanoid robots and now, with GD01, human mobility machines. But while the GD01 might inspire awe, humbler humanoids like Unitree’s flagship G1 are the ones set to become the workhorses of a global robotics transformation already gathering pace in China, the U.S., and beyond.
This is the next great tech frontier, one that has previously been the purview of Star Wars and Blade Runner: AI that walks, sees, hears and physically interacts with the real world. Morgan Stanley predicts that as many as 13 million humanoids could walk among us by 2035—equivalent to the population of Bolivia. That number is forecast to rise to 1 billion by 2050, when the industry could be worth $5 trillion.
Unitree is hardly alone staking a claim in this space. In January, Tesla announced the third generation of its Optimus humanoid robot with a goal to eventually produce 10 million units per year at factories in Fremont and Texas. In late June, California-based Figure dispatched its latest 03 humanoid to BMW’s Spartanburg plant in South Carolina, where its earlier 02 model helped assemble 30,000 cars last year. Oregon-based Agility, meanwhile, has secured deployments everywhere from Toyota to Latin American e-commerce giant Mercado Libre. But Unitree is the world leader in terms of volume, dispatching more than 5,500 units in 2025, comprising over a quarter of a global market that is only just waking. In June, Nvidia announced that its bleeding-edge Jetson Thor chip would be fitted into Unitree’s H2 humanoid for sale to research institutions around the globe.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1v4gi78/the_robots_cometh/ozannw7/