A few weeks ago, I wrote on AI and existentialism - in that article, I wrote on software and hardware creating the potential for identity crises at scale, and I briefly mentioned robots. A few prominent conversations of mine centered around robotics this week, so I figure this would be the perfect time to talk about it. After all, nothing like talking the future over brunch, right?
I want to give just an absolute idea of scale, here, for the unaware. Figure AI is a hardware robotics company that just introduced a line capable of 12,000 humanoid robots a year. That's one single company, not including the ambitions of Tesla's Optimus and others. China has 150 robotics companies, and the number only grows. In the next decade, we're going to have millions of robots everywhere.
Here's where the line between stability and instability gets very blurry. There's an example I love to use, and I'll abstract it how I can.
Modern financial markets are predicated on instability/volatility, especially options and futures. For the non-finance people in the room, this essentially means that Wall St. traders can gamble on the future price of goods. Will coffee farm workers in Colombia go on strike? Will pests wipe out a crop this year? What about the logistics and transportation companies involved in delivering a cup of Folgers to your kitchen table - will they suffer due to rising petrol costs? Labor unions? OSHA and healthcare? Will that increase the price of coffee? And so on.
What robotics do, at scale, is create baseline stability. Coffee has the potential to be automatically harvested. Pests can be systematically monitored and eradicated. Packing, logistics, and other hauling labor becomes automated. Apply this example for every given commodity in the market: everything from metals to food to luxuries and so on. Eventually, we reach a baseline level of guaranteed production for a given asset, and statistical stability for predicting how much can be created in a certain year.
That example is for one asset. Derivatives total (on the high end) $1 QUADRILLION+ dollars in the market. Robotics will systematically change what "scarcity" looks like for the human race, and this is an issue for systems predicated on 1. scarcity 2. instability.
This also means that robotics will put a lot of people out of a job. What does handmade artisanship now look like if a humanoid robot can mimic all the imperfect curves made in a pottery wheel? Or blowing glass? Or pouring a nice latte with your favorite anime character on it?
Robotics and AI also require increasingly idiosyncratic data (i.e. unique data), and that means we'll integrate closer with them (whether we like it or not). The existential dread experienced by humanity (mentioned in my past article) will only amplify. Socioeconomic and cultural instability will mount ever higher, in the face of growing systematic stability which threatens our old identities.
Here's the bright side, though, because I'm a pragmatic optimist. We can change too. We're adaptable. We'll find new ways of organizing society, of governance, of living, of eking out existence that leads to happiness for us - whatever that may mean. Medicine will undoubtedly improve: healthspans will increase. Matcha will (probably) get cheaper (unless we invoke Jevon's paradox to the point of complete global saturation). Housing is already 3D-printable, and with robotic foremen, we'll reach higher levels of abundance in time.
Stocks and money will probably be phased out too, just like how bearer bonds no longer actively exist. If they do exist, they will probably be tied to our living identities as an allocation (i.e. resources produced purely from robotics will allow a fixed amount per living person), with a certain amount of old currency able to be redenominated (somehow). That's more theory.
Stability will create instability, but much in same way that a human body may reject a foreign implant (if the immune system is not taught to recognize it). We don't know what tomorrow holds, but it's that very same uncertain nature with which we gamble on markets and all related assets. The most important thing is to stay open-minded and curious.
Be well,
Michael Kirsanov