OpenAI and Figure join the race to Humanoid Robot Workers

In Norway, 

OpenAI and Figure join the race to humanoid robot workers

By Loz Blain,  April 10, 2023

OpenAI has invested in Norway's 1X Technologies, which expects to launch its Neo robot (left) in the coming months. Meanwhile, Figure is working on the Figure 1 humanoid robot (right) in the USA

OpenAI has invested in Norway's 1X Technologies, which expects to launch its Neo robot (left) in the coming months. Meanwhile, Figure is working on the Figure 1 humanoid robot (right) in the USA1X technologies / Figure

Humanoid robots built around cutting-edge AI brains promise shocking, disruptive change to labor markets and the wider global economy – and near-unlimited investor returns to whoever gets them right at scale. Big money is now flowing into the sector.

The jarring emergence of ChatGPT has made it clear: AIs are advancing at a wild and accelerating pace, and they're beginning to transform industries based around desk jobs that typically marshall human intelligence. They'll begin taking over portions of many white-collar jobs in the coming years, leading initially to huge increases in productivity, and eventually, many believe, to huge increases in unemployment.

If you're coming out of school right now and looking to be useful, blue collar work involving actual physical labor might be a better bet than anything that'd put you behind a desk.

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But on the other hand, it's starting to look like a general-purpose humanoid robot worker might be closer than anyone thinks, imbued with light-speed, swarm-based learning capabilities to go along with GPT-version-X communication abilities, a whole internet's worth of knowledge, and whatever physical attributes you need for a given job.

Such humanoids will begin as dumbass job-site apprentices with zero common sense, but they'll learn – at a frightening pace, if the last few months in AI has been any kind of indication. They'll be available 24/7, power sources permitting, gradually expanding their capabilities and overcoming their limitations until they begin displacing humans. They could potentially crash the cost of labor, leading to enormous gains in productivity – and a fundamental upheaval of the blue-collar labor market at a size and scale limited mainly by manufacturing, materials, and what kinds of jobs they're capable of taking over.

The best-known humanoid to date has been Atlas, by Boston Dynamics. Atlas has shown impressive progress over the last 10 years. But Atlas is a research platform, and Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert has been clear that the company is in no rush to take humanoids to the mass market.

Atlas Gets a Grip | Boston Dynamics

"We have to remove the pressure to make things more reliable, more manufacturable, and cheaper in the short term," he told IEE Spectrum last year. "Those are things that are important, but they’re in the way of trying new things. The pitch I made to [parent company] Hyundai explicitly says that, and proposes funding that extends long enough that we’re not distracted in the short term."

Hanson Robotics and Engineered Arts, among others, have focused on human/robot interaction, concentrating on making humanoids like Sophia and Ameca, with lifelike and expressive faces. Ameca in particular communicates using the GPT language model.