Generative AI is speeding up human-like robot development. What that means for jobs
Shenzhen-based LimX Dynamics shows off one of its humanoid robots.
Limx Dynamics
BEIJING — ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence is speeding up research and bringing humanoid robots closer to reality in China, home to many of the world’s factories.
AI has been around for decades. What’s changed with the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot is the ability of AI to better understand and generate content in a human-like way. While the U.S.-based tech is not officially available in China, local companies such as Baidu have released similar chatbots and AI models.
In robotics, the development of generative AI can help machines with understanding and perceiving their environment, said Li Zhang, chief operating officer of Shenzhen-based LimX Dynamics.
About three months after joining the two-year-old startup, Li said he shortened his expectations for how long it would take LimX to produce a humanoid robot capable of not just factory work, but also helping out in a households.
Li originally expected the entire process to take eight to ten years, but now anticipates some use cases will be ready in five to seven years. “After working for a few months, I saw how various tools’ abilities were improved because of AI,” he said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
“It has accelerated our entire research and development cycle,” he said.
Companies are rushing into the opportunity. OpenAI itself is backing humanoid robot startups, while Elon Musk’s Tesla is developing its own, called Optimus.
Electric car giant BYD last year invested in Shanghai-based Agibot just months after its founding, according to PitchBook.
And at a high level, Chinese state media in November published a photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping watching a humanoid robot at an exhibition center during his first trip to Shanghai since the pandemic. The robot was developed by Fourier Intelligence.
Before humanoid robots reach households, as LimX ultimately intends, factories can be a lucrative, enclosed scenario in which to deploy them.
China surpassed Japan in 2013 as the world’s largest installer of industrial robots, and now accounts for more than 50% of the global total, according to Stanford’s latest AI Index report.
Electronics, automotive and metal and machinery were the three leading sectors for industrial robot installation in China, the report said.
Impact on human jobs
When it comes fully replacing human workers, however, AI advancements alone aren’t enough.
Even if AI allows a robot to think and make decisions on par with humans, mechanical limitations are a major reason why humanoids can’t yet replace human laborers, LimX’s Li said.
One of LimX’s backers, Future Capital, has also invested in a company called Pan Motor that specializes in motors for humanoids.
Generative AI doesn’t directly help with robotic motion, pointed out Eric Xia, partner at Future Capital, an investor in LimX. But “advances in large language models can help humanoid robots with advanced task planning,” he said in Chinese, translated by CNBC.
LimX’s other investors include Lenovo Capital.
A shift toward factory robots can accelerate, once the cost-per-robot comes down.
Steve Hoffman, chairman of a startup accelerator called Founders Space, said he is working with a Chinese startup called Fastra, which he expects can begin mass robot production in one year. He said he spent time in China this year teaching local businesses how to integrate generative AI.
“We have already received six orders from research institutions,” he said, noting the startup aims to lower the cost per robot to between $50,000 to $100,000 by rollout.
“If we can hit a $50,000 price point, we can sell a lot of robots,” he said, pointing out the robots’ batteries can be charged as they work, 24 hours a day. “Could pay for the robot in a year.”
In pharmaceutical research, generative AI can reduce costs, without cutting into human labor.
“You don’t save costs in our business by having less people. You actually save costs by making fewer experiments that fail,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, chairman of the board, executive director and CEO of Insilico Medicine, which has offices in Hong Kong, New York and other parts of the world.
He noted how large pharmaceutical companies have typically had to spend thousands of dollars to replicate a molecule for testing — and would run a few thousand such tests per program. He claimed that with the help of AI, Insilico only needs to synthesize about 70 molecules per program.
The company published a paper in Nature in March claiming to have reached phase 2 clinical trials for an AI-generated drug.
Technology
Amazon was questioned by House China committee over ‘dangerous and unwise’ TikTok partnership
Amazon logo on a brick building exterior, San Francisco, California, August 20, 2024.
Smith Collection | Gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images
Amazon representatives met with the House China committee in recent months to discuss lawmaker concerns over the company’s partnership with TikTok, CNBC confirmed.
A spokesperson for the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party confirmed the meeting, which centered on a shopping deal between Amazon and TikTok announced in August. The agreement allows users of TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, to link their account with Amazon and make purchases from the site without leaving TikTok.
“The Select Committee conveyed to Amazon that it is dangerous and unwise for Amazon to partner with TikTok given the grave national security threat the app poses,” the spokesperson said. The parties met in September, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news.
Representatives from Amazon and TikTok did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
TikTok’s future viability in the U.S. is uncertain. In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If TikTok fails to cut ties with its parent company, app stores and internet hosting services would be prohibited from offering the app.
President-elect Donald Trump could rescue TikTok from a potential U.S. ban. He promised on the campaign trail that he would “save” TikTok, and said in a March interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad” with the app.
In his first administration, Trump had tried to implement a TikTok ban. He changed his stance around the time he met with billionaire Jeff Yass. The Republican megadonor’s trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, owns a 15% stake in ByteDance, while Yass has a 7% stake in the company, NBC and CNBC reported in March.
— CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.
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Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning says censorship is still “a dominant threat,” advocating for a more decentralized internet to help better protect individuals online.
Her comments come amid ongoing tension linked to online safety rules, with some tech executives recently seeking to push back over content moderation concerns.
Speaking to CNBC’s Karen Tso at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, Manning said that one way to ensure online privacy could be “decentralized identification,” which gives individuals the ability to control their own data.
“Censorship is a dominant threat. I think that it is a question of who’s doing the censoring, and what the purpose is — and also censorship in the 21st century is more about whether or not you’re boosted through like an algorithm, and how the fine-tuning of that seems to work,” Manning said.
“I think that social media and the monopolies of social media have sort of gotten us used to the fact that certain things that drive engagement will be attractive,” she added.
“One of the ways that we can sort of countervail that is to go back to the more decentralized and distribute the internet of the early ’90s, but make that available to more people.”
Nym Technologies Chief Security Officer Chelsea Manning at a press conference held with Nym Technologies CEO Harry Halpin in the Media Village to present NymVPN during the second day of Web Summit on November 13, 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Horacio Villalobos | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Asked how tech companies could make money in such a scenario, Manning said there would have to be “a better social contract” put in place to determine how information is shared and accessed.
“One of the things about distributed or decentralized identification is that through encryption you’re able to sort of check the box yourself, instead of having to depend on the company to provide you with a check box or an accept here, you’re making that decision from a technical perspective,” Manning said.
‘No longer secrecy versus transparency’
Manning, who works as a security consultant at Nym Technologies, a company that specializes in online privacy and security, was convicted of espionage and other charges at a court-martial in 2013 for leaking a trove of secret military files to online media publisher WikiLeaks.
She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was later released in 2017, when former U.S. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.
Asked to what extent the environment has changed for whistleblowers today, Manning said, “We’re at an interesting time because information is everywhere. We have more information than ever.”
She added, “Countries and governments no longer seem to invest the same amount of time and effort in hiding information and keeping secrets. What countries seem to be doing now is they seem to be spending more time and energy spreading misinformation and disinformation.”
Manning said the challenge for whistleblowers now is to sort through the information to understand what is verifiable and authentic.
“It’s no longer secrecy versus transparency,” she added.
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