robots

has decided to ban its next-generation humanoid robots

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The US knows what it feels like when China controls a critical resource and decides to use it as leverage at the negotiating table. It has happened with rare earths and other strategic minerals, and he does not want it to be repeated either with robotics or with power electronics that sustains your data centers of artificial intelligence (AI). This is the scenario in which the Government led by Donald Trump has decided to act before this dependency becomes a vulnerability. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday announced new restrictions that prohibit the import of new-generation Chinese humanoid robots and quadruped robots, as well as connected power inverters. The latter are the equipment that links renewable energy sources and batteries with the electrical grid and data centers. This measure only affects new and not yet authorized models, but the FCC reserves the power to revoke authorizations that have already been granted. The underlying fear is not only economic. The US Administration wants to avoid a cyberespionage campaign linked to the Chinese Government similar to the operation Volt Typhoon 2023, after several agencies have concluded that connected robotics and inverters represent vulnerabilities capable of exposing critical infrastructure to espionage or a blackout. Manufacturers, however, will be able to request conditional approval through an FCC process overseen by the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, in a scheme modeled on that which already exists for drones. The US fears the mass adoption of Chinese robots John Moolenaar, a Republican congressman who chairs the House Select Committee on China, has celebrated this decision: “Protect our country and strengthen our nation’s robotics industry.” China is by far the world’s largest manufacturer of power inverters, with Sungrow Power Supply and Huawei leading the way (the latter already strongly sanctioned by the US), and has been gaining share in the Western market with a very aggressive strategy of lowering prices. Some analysts foresee mass adoption of humanoid robots equipped with AI-based “brains” On the other hand, some analysts foresee a mass adoption of humanoid robots equipped with AI-based “brains”, while the accelerated construction of data centers in the US will depend on a reliable supply of inverters. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent I had already warned separately that Chinese AI companies could face US sanctions for intellectual property theft. After yesterday’s measures, the FCC is expected to exempt numerous non-Chinese suppliers from these restrictions, as it already did with the recent bans on drones and routers foreigners. The logic is always the same: close the door to Beijing without also closing it to its own industrial allies. We will see what impact these measures have on the trade conflict between the US and China. Image | UBTech Robotics More information | Nikkei Asia In Xataka | US robot manufacturers have asked their government for help. If they don’t get it, China will win this race

Tesla plummets on the stock market, but the fault is not with the cars, but with the robots

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Tesla shares They have sunk this Thursday between 12% and 14%being one of its biggest collapses in recent years. The fall came after the publication of the second quarter results, worsening even more during the conference with investors, in which Elon Musk recognized that manufacturing their humanoid robots Optimus on a large scale it will be much more complicated than he had promised until now. According to data collected by different specialized media, the fall has erased more than $140 billion in market capitalization in a single day. What Wall Street didn’t like. Tesla has invoiced $28.24 billion this quarter, 26% more than a year before, and delivered a total of 480,126 vehicles, which are also record figures. However, operating profit has plummeted 57% to $398 million, and operating margin has fallen from 4.1% to 1.4%. On the other hand, adjusted earnings per share remained at 33 cents, well below the close to 51-53 cents that Wall Street analysts expected. Along with this, free cash flow was positioned in negative for the first time in more than two years, with a balance of around -1.1 billion dollars, while investment spending (capex) shot up 142%, to almost 5.8 billion, within an annual spending plan of 25 billion dollars, according to they detailed from The Next Web. Worry. More than the numbers, what sank the value even further during the call with investors itself was Musk’s tone when talking about Optimus. And the top person in charge of the company admitted openly that it is the most difficult manufacturing challenge the company has faced. “It’s going to be the most difficult product to scale into production that we’ve ever made at Tesla, because everything about the robot is new,” Musk said during the earnings call. The truth is that it was a rather strange conference, since he also stated that he was “sick.” ANDn problemyes. Musk himself listed several technical obstacles, including the wear and tear of parts, the difficulty of achieving dexterity similar to that of a human hand (which he described as “something incredible” that no robotics company has yet managed to replicate) and the risk of breakdowns. Also stressed that, unlike cars, for which Tesla already has a consolidated supply chain, Optimus has no previous supply chain and is made up of about 10,000 unique parts, many of them manufactured from scratch. In fact, Tesla removed from its second quarter earnings presentation references to Optimus mass production that it had included in its first quarter earnings report, according to they pointed from The Next Web. script twist. Musk’s tone has changed from previous results. Last year he claimed that he would be “surprised” if Tesla was not producing 100,000 Optimus units per month within five years, and in January 2025 he even projected between 50,000 and 100,000 robots by 2026, according to they remembered from the middle. However, in January of this year he had already recognized that no Optimus was still performing useful tasks in Tesla factories. And the more than a thousand Generation 3 robots deployed in Fremont and the Texas Gigafactory were dedicated solely to collecting training data. Musk also took advantage of the call to defend Optimus against rivals such as Figure or Boston Dynamics, insisting that demonstrations of other humanoid robots circulating on the Internet are “pre-programmed or teleoperated,” and that Optimus will be the first capable of performing general tasks autonomously. Robotaxis. Musk also had things to say about the launch of your robotaxis service, pointing that the vehicles have already exceeded 380,000 kilometers without supervision in six cities and “without notable incidents.” But, as they point Since Electrek, it is Tesla itself that decides what counts as “remarkable”, and that same number of kilometers is traveled by Waymo, its main competitor, in just one day. On the other hand, the company’s internal data shows that the growth of the service is stagnant. And the paid kilometers have remained flat, around 900,000, and the active fleet without supervision has been reduced to only 21 vehicles. Technological setback. It hasn’t been a good week for big tech this week. On the same Thursday, the Nasdaq fell more than 2% and the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones lost more than 1%, also dragged down by the results of Alphabet, which dropped 6.5% in the stock market after announcing a strong increase in spending and its first “burn” of cash. Together, the “magnificent seven” of the stock market lost $767 billion in value in a single day, according to Bloomberg. The VIX volatility index, Wall Street’s so-called “fear gauge,” rose to its highest level in almost a month. And now what. During the same call, investors asked Musk about the highly rumored merger between SpaceX and Tesla. The businessman did not rule it out, although he did not give many details either. “We cannot talk about merging companies at an earnings conference,” he said, adding that such a move “has to be done with the appropriate process.” The future of Optimus is also not a minor matter for Musk himself, as part of his compensation package as CEO is conditioned to the delivery of one million Optimus robots within a period of ten years, and things are not starting at the moment. For the moment, Tesla has converted part of its assembly lines in Fremont to manufacture Optimus and is building a specific plant next to the Texas Gigafactory, but it no longer dares to set a date for the start of volume production. Cover image | Flickr (Ministry of Communications), Unsplash (Priscilla Du Preez) In Xataka | Google has plenty of chips to sell. He prefers to keep them so as not to be left behind in the AGI race.

the factories of robots, electric cars and AI

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China is one of those destinations that I have marked on my vacation wish list: I hope to see the red pandas, the Xi’an Warriors and the Great Wall. Yes, I have been there twice already, but they were work trips where although I could see the spectacular night skyline of Shanghai, the Avenue of Stars in Hong Kong or temples in Shenzhen, where I was most was in brand headquarters and their factories. Be careful, I don’t regret anything: they were wonderful trips where I discovered that China technologically lives in the future. Because China has an immense historical legacy, but a future and an industrial fabric that, quite simply, leaves you speechless. Highly recommended. Well, what for me were work trips have now become a tourist destination. And be careful, it is not a new phenomenon: technology has always aroused curiosity, but until now the most techie people had their mecca in Silicon Valley. Shenzhen, resort city. The GloPen tour operator offers 8-day tour packages through Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu to see first-hand companies, technologies and people in the world of AI and autonomous driving. Among the organizers is BYD. Tech Buzz China has “crash dives” for investors, executives and founders with direct access to AI labs, electric vehicle factories and robotics startups. China Study Tour has of seven-day programs that combine AI, electric vehicles, robotics, healthcare and sustainability for corporate and academic groups, with access to BYD, Huawei or DJI. The price range starts at $3,000 for travel not included, but if you are looking for something more affordable, on Viator there are boring options and one that is amazing: “Shenzhen Tech Tour: Explore the Future”a bilingual tour from 80 euros that includes a drone food delivery demonstration, a robotaxi ride, and visits to stores selling AI glasses. Why is it important. Because this sociological phenomenon shows something: the perception of who leads global technology is shifting from the United States to China. For a more specialized profile like an investor, the trip makes all the sense in the world: reading a PDF is not the same as being there on the ground and seeing it yourself. On a larger scale, these trips are helping to shape new economic alliances: giants like India or old Europe are updating their industrial strategies and these trips to see it in situ constitute a great reinforcement. An example: the trips of the president of Spain to China, where he visited the Xiaomi headquarters. Context. That China is where it is is anything but a coincidence: it has been directing its industrial policy towards robotics, electric vehicles and ICT as priority sectors for years with subsidies, goals and specific commitments, as an example of its ‘Made in China 2025‘. The result has been a brutal boost to the industry, the development and manufacturing of complex high-tech products. What is visited today on tours is the result of that strategy that has been maturing for a decade. Furthermore, China and the United States are immersed in a technological war with vetoes and tariffs. When standard channels of collaboration and communication are closed, showing up on the spot becomes one of the best ways to not be blinded to what is happening on the other side. And China is making it easy, both through these private and institutional initiatives: in 2025 it opened its doors to almost 50 countries, including France, Germany, Spain and Russia, which can access China without the need for a visa. In detail. Technological tourism is aligned with China’s interest in getting closer to the world, because the Asian giant is truly unknown to the outside world and obviously these types of tours are a magnificent sales and image showcase, an authentic soft skill that sweeps social networks. And since a picture is worth a thousand words (which in this case is not even painted), YouTuber iShowSpeed ​​will ride a flying car in Shenzhen or the German Chancellor Merz saw robots doing kung-fu It makes fantastic advertising. Someone sees the technology that is being made in China on social networks, becomes curious and that leads them to book a tour. A virtuous circle. Yes, but. We continue with the obvious: in a tourist package sponsored by manufacturers you will see only what they want you to see, just like those dream Google officesand they can perfectly be showcases designed to impress that do not have to represent the entire Chinese industry: one thing is the showroom and another is reality. On a five-day trip to Shenzhen you can see the tip of the industry’s iceberg in cutting-edge factories, but not the working conditions or its environmental policy. Although that is not something exclusive to China: on a visit to Meta in San Francisco or Stellantis in Zaragoza they are not going to tell you that either. In Xataka | China stripped Japan of its tourists in hopes of causing an economic hole. Nothing could be further from reality In Xataka | Young tourists from China have begun to visit random places en masse. There is an explanation: Xiaohongshu Cover | Jose Garcia and Joel Danielson

ten million robots before 2040

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For years we looked at Japan and thought of robots with friendly shapes, measured steps, and an almost theatrical ability to show us the future. SOHonda’s humanoid, was probably the best symbol of that era: a machine designed to impress, excite and demonstrate how far Japanese engineering could go. But the current debate is different. Japan no longer seems obsessed with recovering that icon, but with something more practical: bringing robots to the real world, where there is a lack of workers and repetitive tasks accumulate, and each unfilled shift begins to become an economic problem. The Japanese plan. METI, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, has put a very specific figure on the table: around 10 million robots deployed in 2040. The goal is part of the revised AI Robotics strategy, a robotics policy with AI to combine artificial intelligence and robotics in machines capable of acting in real environments. The new roadmap expands the focus to 18 application areas and incorporates sectors such as catering, food manufacturing and healthcare. From icon to work. ASIMO did not disappear because Japan lost interest in robots, but because that road was no longer the center of gravity. Honda stopped developing ASIMO in 2018 and withdrew it from public demonstrations in 2022, while part of that learning moved to more applied lines, such as assistance or teleoperation. That transition sums up the current moment well: the country still has robotic muscle, but the question has changed. It is no longer enough to demonstrate that a machine can walk like us; Now you must justify what task you can take on and where you can do it. Much more than humanoid. The 2040 target should not be read as a promise of millions of human-shaped robots. The strategy speaks of a much broader range, with industrial, mobile, healthcare, catering, logistics, inspection, maintenance and emergency response robots. Humanoids appear on the radar of the strategy when they make sense, but they are not the sole focus of the plan. The idea is to deploy machines where they can take on tasks that are repetitive, physical, dangerous or difficult to cover with sufficient personnel. The demographic problem. The underlying reason is not in the fascination with technology, but in the lack of workers. Japan faces structural labor shortage marked by aging, low birth rate and an increasingly stressed active population. According to the Recruit Works Institutethe country could reach 2040 with a deficit of about 11 million workers. In this context, robots stop being a futuristic bet and become a way to keep care, services, logistics, food and production going. A silent power. Context matters because Japan is not starting from scratch. Although today much of the noise about humanoid robots and new AI platforms comes from China or the United States, the country continues to be one of the major global players in industrial robotics. The International Federation of Robotics points out that Japan represented 38% of global industrial robot production in 2023, installed 44,500 units in 2024 and had about 450,500 robots in use. The pending unknowns. The plan, however, still leaves open questions. Japan has set the goal, priority sectors and technological direction, but has not detailed which companies will manufacture this huge number of robots or how much of the deployment will depend on national suppliers or international alliances. We also do not know how the weight will be distributed between industrial robots, mobile systems, healthcare solutions or service machines. The commitment to physical AI. The strategy is not only about deploying more machines, but about improving the intelligence that drives them. At the same press conference on June 30, 2026, METI announced that the consortium formed by Noetra and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology of Japan had been selected to develop a national multimodal foundation model, an AI foundation capable of combining different types of data. The idea is that this base can help build robots capable of interpreting information, combining signals from the environment and acting better in the physical world. Images | Sling In Xataka | The return of Fable 5 has a worrying problem: Anthropic has condemned it to “I would rather not do it”

After marathons and combats, humanoid robots already have their next challenge: climbing Everest

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we have seen robots doing kickboxing, skiing, dancing with astonishing precision and have even participated in their own robotic olympics. The new feat starring a humanoid robot has been to become a mountaineer. He has already climbed to the top of the Chimborazo volcano in Chile, 6,263 meters high, and already has his next goal: Everest. The climbing robot. The robot in question is a Unitree G1 and is part of the ‘Pemba’ initiativeled by a French engineer named Pablo Berlanga. The robot reached the top of the Chimborazo volcano on June 5 and already has its next climbs scheduled; In June he will climb Mauna Kea in Hawaii and in October he will summit Everest, the highest mountain in the world. Yes, but. Equipped with special boots and a jacket that protects it from extreme conditions, the Unitree G1 managed to complete a journey of about 16 hours and reach the summit at more than 6,200 meters of altitude. However, as they say in Futurismhe didn’t do it all by himself. The robot is not capable of climbing slopes of more than 30% inclination, so it had to be transported on those sections. A noble goal. Most shows with robots are just that, shows. However, in this case there is a reason beyond that. This engineer says that the idea of ​​taking a humanoid robot to the highest mountains on the planet came from his experience in conservation projects in remote jungles such as the Amazon or the Congo. In these natural parks, being able to record and broadcast live is not only important to investigate and protect the environment, it also represents an important source of income. A camera with legs. Berlanga built cameras that connected to Starlink and were capable of live streaming. The problem is that since they are fixed, their field of vision is limited and the fauna is constantly moving, so I had to place many cameras. From here the idea of ​​”putting legs on them” was born. Obviously, the robot does not need to be able to climb Everest to do this work, but it is the way to publicize this initiative and obtain support to make it a reality. He has created a “tokenization” project in order to finance the project. Image | Pablo Berlanga in X, edited In Xataka | Soon we will all have humanoid robots at home, or at least that is what these companies want

Unitree is doing with robots what DJI did with drones: becoming inevitable

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Not long ago we marveled at what quadruped robots were capable of doing. Today, humanoid robots monopolize all the spotlights and the stunts they are capable of performing left on the floor what seemed impressive to us at the time. Although There are several companies in the humanoid robot race, There is one that is leading this transformation and is one step away from gaining global dominance: Unitree Robotics. Its strategy closely follows what other giants such as DJI or BYD did previously. 10,000 units. It is the key figure to understand Unitree’s advantage in the emerging market for humanoid robots. Tesla and Figure have surprised us by showing what their robots are capable of, but neither has achieved something key: putting them on sale en masse. According to Semianalysisin the coming weeks Unitree will have distributed 10,000 units of its robots. Unstoppable growth. The Unitree empire began with quadruped robots and it was not until 2023 when they introduced their first humanoid, the Unitree H1. The financial growth of recent years perfectly reflects this explosion: in 2022 they invoiced 122 million yuan (about 15.5 million euros) and in 2025 they invoiced 1,167 million yuan in the first nine months alone, almost 150 million euros. The combination of high-performance solutions at competitive prices has made Unitree the first company to begin to democratize a technology that until recently was the realm of science fiction. The path that DJI started. What Unitree is doing with robotics is the same thing that DJI did with drones. In 2013, DJI Phantom launcheda very cheap and incomplete product, but at that time the alternatives were toy drones or professional drones with a much higher cost, DJI was creating the market for consumer drones. With each new generation they added functions and opened more submarkets, from research, photo and video professionals and of course amateurs. Vertical integration. It is the key strategy of DJI and other Chinese giants such as BYD. It is about controlling the supply chain as much as possible, manufacturing critical components in a way that allows them to technically iterate much faster and, in the long run, drastically reduce costs. In addition, DJI took advantage of the huge Chinese electronics ecosystem, in which prices dropped a lot in a short time. They say in Semianalysis that GPS went from costing 800 dollars in 2003 to less than 14 dollars in 2013flight controllers cost $2,000 in 2006 and only $400 in 2011. DJI started by manufacturing the largest and most complex component, the flight controller, and BYD made the same with batteries. This is how they ate up the market, controlling critical components and creating a cost structure unattainable by any competitor. Unitree’s strategy. The company, which by the way was founded by a former DJI employeeis following DJI’s lead in that they manufacture the critical component (the actuator, which is what is responsible for moving the robot’s limbs) and have opened new markets for robotics. First they perfected and they made quadrupeds cheaperand then they made the leap to humanoids. Its first model, the Unitree H1, cost about $90,000, but today the Unitree G1 can be had for only $13,500. They have encountered many problems along the way, such as overheating when the robot held weight for a few minutes, but controlling many of the key parts has allowed them to quickly iterate and solve it. In other words, it may not be the best robot, it is its ability to improve it that is unrivaled. The Pentagon blockade. Just yesterday we said that The US has added more Chinese companies to its blacklistamong which is Unitree. The reason they have given is that they consider it to be directly linked to the Chinese army. Being on this list means that, from now on, the Pentagon is prohibited from contracting directly with these companies and starting next year they will not be able to do so through third parties either. All of the companies on the list compete directly with other American companies, so there seems to be an intention to slow their progress. Maybe they’ll be late. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | Humanoid robotics are striking, but China is clear about which robots make money

In China they want humanoid robots to do household chores. The problem is that a house is not a factory

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For years we have seen humanoid robots do somersaults, danceppractice martial arts or move through factories with increasingly striking capabilities. The next step seems almost natural: taking them home to do the laundry, prepare a bed or support elder care. The problem is that this transition is not as direct as it seems. A factory is designed to reduce uncertainty; A home, on the other hand, is full of small exceptions. And for a robot, those exceptions can be exactly the difference between a flashy demo and a useful product. The concept. SCMP account That GigaAI has introduced the SeeLight S1 as the country’s first general-purpose home humanoid robot model, developed in collaboration with the Hubei Humanoid Robot Innovation Center and the Hubei Humanoid Robotics Industry Alliance. In images released by the company, he appears performing very recognizable tasks: cutting vegetables, frying eggs, loading a washing machine, hanging clothes, making a bed or opening curtains. The company also plans to test it for free in homes in Wuhan in the first half of 2027. A house is not an assembly line. That is the fundamental difference. In a factory, the robot can work with known references, pieces always placed in the same way and movements that are repeated thousands of times with very few variations. In a home, on the other hand, nothing guarantees that the shirt is where it was yesterday, that the chair has not moved or that a pet does not cross in front of it just when the robot is trying to complete a task. Much movement, little understanding. Xinhua itself collects an idea that helps cool down the epic of the demonstrations and that does not only affect China, but humanoid robotics in general: humanoids have greatly improved in their “cerebellum”, the part linked to control and coordination, but they still have major problems in their “brain”. In other words, they can execute complex movements, but it is difficult for them to understand what a scene means and what function each object has within it. Home is also a data problem. Now, for these systems to work better in real homes, they need to learn from real homes, but the home is precisely one of the places where it is least easy to collect data. We are not just talking about room maps, but about objects, forces, angles, routines and physical decisions that are difficult to simulate. Advances and challenges. According to NSFCthe country expected to exceed 10,000 humanoid units sold in 2025, with a year-on-year growth of 125%, and there were already pilots in industrial manufacturing, delivery, catering and services. The important nuance is that none of this automatically turns this industrial career into a successful deployment within homes: the sector itself locates the path prudently, first industry, then logistics and commercial uses, and only later the home. A future easy to imagine, difficult to materialize. The difficult part is demonstrating that this can be done usefully, safely, and at reasonable cost outside of a prepared demonstration. There is the real border. China and other countries around the world can accelerate prototypes, pilots and production, but a home does not forgive clumsiness in the same way as a controlled stage. To get home, the robot will not have to understand human life better. Images | GigaAI In Xataka | In China there are already “schools” for robots. Its objective is the same as schools for humans: to teach them to work

wants to be the “TSMC” of data for robots

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In recent years we have seen how artificial intelligence advanced on a relatively abundant raw material: text, images, videos and code published on the web. With robots, the terrain changes completely. We are not just talking about answering a question well or generating a convincing image, but about acting in the physical world, moving pieces, grabbing objects and doing so without everything being perfectly prepared. That difference explains why part of the next AI race may play out away from the usual focus. The investment. Settings It has not attracted the attention of just any investor, but of some of the large business groups in South Korea. According to Foley Hoagwhich legally advised Config on the operation, the startup, based in Seoul and San José, has closed a seed round of $27 million led by Samsung Venture Investment. ZER01NE Ventures, the investment arm of Hyundai Motor, LG Technology Ventures and SKT America have also participated. The operation values ​​the company at more than 200 million dollars and brings its total financing to 35 million. The “TSMC” of robots. The simile is not about chips, but about position in the value chain. Config aspires to position itself at a point similar to that of TSMC in semiconductors: not competing with its end customers, but rather supplying a part that others need to create their own products. In their case, that piece is not wafers or processors, but rather data for foundational robotics models. That approach is gaining traction as large manufacturers look to develop their own robotic AI without relying entirely on third-party vendors. Key difference. In a language model, the big cost is processing enormous amounts of digital information; in robotics, as Config CEO Minjoon Seo explained to TechCruncheach piece of data must be collected physically. That means having robots, spaces where they can be tested, and human teams that make them work. As companies look for more capable machines, data collection and labeling can quickly become more expensive, because we are no longer talking about information that waits on the web, but rather actions that occur in the real physical world. The key is in the conversion. The signature is based on an idea that is somewhat less obvious than the simple accumulation of data. Many robotics teams train their models with human motion data and then try to adapt them to machine behavior. The startup advocates another path: transforming that data before training begins so that it better fits the way robots move and interact with the environment. They have already started. Config has almost 300 people working on producing that data. The startup claims to have gathered more than 100,000 hours of human movement data, compared to roughly 3,000 hours for AgiBot Worldwhich the source presents as the largest comparable open set. The difference, more than 30 times, helps explain why the company is so insistent on the scale of its data operation. What’s coming. The next step will be to expand this machinery even more. Config wants to scale its operations in Vietnam and Seoul to reach one million hours of data collected, a goal that fits with its idea of ​​becoming an infrastructure provider for third parties. The company also aims to take its enterprise platform to $10 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2027. The third front is to launch a Robot-as-a-Service product in the cloud, designed so that companies can use the foundational Config model without depending on hardware integrated into the robot itself. Looking to the future. What this movement leaves is a fairly clear snapshot of where part of robotics may go in the coming years. Not everything will depend on the robot that we see in a factory, in a warehouse or in the field, but on all the previous work that allows human actions to be converted into useful learning for a machine. Config is still a young startup and its great promise has yet to be demonstrated at scale, but interest from Samsung, Hyundai, LG and other big names points to an idea with potential. Images | Config | Igor Omilaev In Xataka | Nvidia’s CEO is in China. And the future of your company is at stake there.

“In five years, robots and AI will have to pay taxes for the middle and lower class”

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They say that the devil knows more because he is old than because he is a devil. Therefore, when it comes to have a vision of the future In the technological field, few voices have the weight of Bill Gates. After all, he was one of the avant-garde protagonists of the revolution that brought about the arrival of the personal computer into our lives. The co-founder of Microsoft gave an interview to the middle Australian Financial Review in which he presented his vision on the impact of AI on employment and warns of something that is already being debated in some political and technological circles: whether AI and robotics are going to reduce the need for laborHow will the subsistence of those who lose their jobs be guaranteed? Taxation of the future: robots that pay taxes. The millionaire exposes a concern that other technological billionaires like elon musk or Sam Altman have already expressed on numerous occasions. As Gates explained in his interview, the arrival of AI and robotics to industrial production will have a direct impact on millions of middle and lower class workers who you may lose your job without the option to return to one of the newly created jobs that are expected to replace current jobs. As Gates explained, “We have not yet reached the point where it is necessary to completely change tax structures, but we may do so within five years.” The businessman suggests that the solution could be to “shift the tax burden from labor, at least from medium or low-income workers, to capital, or specifically to the taxation of robots or artificial intelligence.” The millionaire’s proposal is that, if a robot or an algorithm occupies the position of a personthat machine should contribute financially, also replacing the employee in his tax obligations. Gates does not ask that innovation be stopped, but rather that the benefits of automation not remain solely in the hands of those who own the technology, but that the benefit of this advance be distributed to society as a whole. The debate, he insists, must occur now, before the displacement of workers is irreversible. On the verge of an inevitable transformation. The Microsoft founder acknowledges that the current focus is on the productivity offered by AI and robots, but points out that his real concern is how governments are going to manage the displacement of human workers from their jobs. It is not a question of if it will happen (something the millionaire takes for granted), but of when and with what speed. The International Monetary Fund has already warned that up to 40% of global jobs have some degree of exposure to AI, with a special impact on middle-class workers and administrative positions, much more susceptible to automation with AI. Gates argues that governments must begin to design fiscal policies adapted to an economy where a growing percentage of the work will not be done by a contributing employee, but will fall to automated systems. Most AI companies will fail. In his speech, the technology millionaire also left room to analyze the current scenario of technology companies participating in the AI ​​race, and he does so with a serious warning: “If you chose the right company, like Microsoft, Google or Apple, you will have done very well. But most AI companies will fail. It is difficult for a non-technical investor to distinguish which ones will prosper.” The businessman advises not to get carried away inflated valuations and bet on established names. The notice comes at a time of massive investment in AI projects, with prices that skyrocket the capitalization of these companies even before having demonstrated that their products They are really competitive. As in the Internet boom of the late 1990s with the dotcomwhen the dust settles only a few actors will still be standing. Global competition and monopoly risk. Beyond the impact on AI employment, Gates warned about geopolitical competition in the development of this technology in this kind of space race that we are living. “What we are seeing now is fierce competition.” China, for example, offers AI models for free, which puts pressure on other companies to set very low prices. “China offers free models and the rest of the companies offer very, very low prices. We would not want a single country or a single company to be the only one good at AI. But I do not see things going that way, at least for now,” said the millionaire in the face of the technological race for AI that the US and China are starring. In Xataka | While technology companies dispense with juniors to replace them with AI, IBM is doing the opposite: catching bargains Image | Flickr, amazon

In the war of humanoid robots, those from the United States dance and those from China work by the piece. It is not a technological issue

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The United States and China are fighting a technological battle with two very clear strategies: one visible and the other invisible. The invisible is that of the artificial intelligence, the fight between models and the basic technological development. The visible one is the creation of data centersthe development of next generation networks and robotics. Because it is the robots that are at the center of that technological race between the two powersbut while one country shows them jumping, the other is making them work. The difference is not technology or money: it is state support. However, as with so many things, there is a trick to it. Priority. China has put robotics at the center of its technological development program for the coming years. The new Five-Year Plan, the roadmap in which the country points out the objectives that it will try to achieve over the next five years, robotics is in a privileged place next to the development of the chip ecosystem or the 6G networks. This is a state issue, a national priority that marks a deliberate shift from assembly line robotics, the ‘simple robots’ of traditional automation, to one with built-in artificial intelligence and a greater range of functions they can perform. Humanoid robotics is not new and, in fact, Boston Dynamics is the company that has been demonstrating its products for years. But while the demonstrations by American companies consisted of making their vehicles dance or do somersaults, humanoid robotsChina has been showing them at sporting events and in impressive showsbut it is also putting them in front of stores. to work. There are already stores in Beijing that are operated by humanoid robots. They are independent, serve users and do not need human supervision (unless they are like this japanese robot). They are also turning them into guides in museums and stores, but beyond that public-facing work, there are important groups that are incorporating humanoid robotics into their workforce. An example is CATL. The electric vehicle battery giant began deploy humanoid robots at its Zhengzhou plant. Their task is one considered high risk for human workers: connecting high-voltage battery plugs on an assembly line. The robots are made by a startup called Spirit AI and feature a vision-language-action AI model. According to the company, they are having 99% success in connections, they triple the work that a human can do and, obviously, they do not need breaks. But it is not only private companies that are deploying this technology. The State Electricity Grid Corporation has intended 6.8 billion yuan, about 1 billion euros, to acquire 8,500 robots with AI. The intention is to deploy them in 26 regions to inspect and maintain power lines. It has a trick. Returning to the comparison with the United States, there is something that stands out: the valuation of the companies. While Chinese powers like Linkerbot are valued at 6,000 million dollars, the American Figure is valued in 39,000 million. The key is that Figure has shipped far fewer units to the market, something largely dominated by Chinese companies. Analysts expect both countries to develop markets of similar size, but China currently leads by far in the early commercialization of humanoid robots. Now, not all the mountain is oregano and, in the last report of the International Federation of Robotics highlights that, although China is dominating the deployment of robots globally (humanoids and non-humanoids), the mass market will still take several years to arrive. According to that document, there are more than 150 humanoid robot developers currently operating in the Chinese market, a market that will represent in 2025 more than 85% of the 15,000 humanoid robot installations worldwide. USA represents 13%. However, what the IFR also says is that much of that deployment remains limited to demonstrations or pilot projects, not a replacement as such for the human workforce. That is to say, there are companies that are already using robots on a large scale (the examples of CATL and the State itself), but within the figures that are used to talk about this Chinese dominance also include those pilot programs or robots that are dedicated to playing sports and dancing, as in the United States. Need. In any case, there is something undeniable: China is betting very hard and very quickly on robotics, be it humanoid or that of the ‘robodogs’ that are already using in military forces or in divisions of firefighters. And the reason is that the country is facing a precipice: that of the demographic pyramid. The accelerated aging of its workforce, together with new generations that are not willing to work for a decent wage, are accelerating the implementation of robots to improve productivity and efficiency in various sectors. China is not the only one. Japan is also experiencing with robotics in day-to-day jobs because it faces the same problem of population aging. And Samsung, part of a South Korea that is also experiencing a demographic crisis, has already indicated that it has a great plan underway to automate its factories with humanoid robots controlled by a central AI. In Xataka | In China they are not satisfied with creating advanced robots: a company has developed a head that gestures like a human

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