✨🤖 Age of AI, meet the Robot Revolution

'Physical AI,' including humanoid robots, is coming fast to your business and home

Item: “In the outbound dock of an Amazon warehouse near Nashville, a robotic arm named Cardinal on a recent day stacked packages, Tetris-style, into six-and-a-half-foot-high carts. Then Proteus, an autonomous platform, moved the carts to the loading bay, flashing electronic eyes designed to make the robot more appealing to human colleagues. As robots become more capable, they are performing an increasing number of tasks in warehouses and delivery centers with varying degrees of aptitude and speed. Machines can load and unload trucks. They can place goods on pallets and take them off. Robots can shift items around in inventory, pick up packages and move goods on warehouse floors. And they can do all this without a human minder guiding their every move.” - The New York Times, Nov. 19, 2024

Most of my essays about artificial intelligence feature an AI-generated image of a robot rather than attempting to illustrate sophisticated software. My justification for that switcheroo: Those advanced robots are probably run by AI. Of course, robots are more visually interesting than software, and I’m not above trying to grab your attention through a cool illustration.

That said, AI and robots will be a powerful technological combo that will shape the 21st century. This from the new analysis “The Rise of AI Robots” by a team of Citigroup analysts:

AI is not new (1950s). Robots are not new (1960s). Moving AI-robots are. In the last decade big leaps forward in AI are allowing robots to see, move, talk, learn, and act. … We are entering a new era in which AI-robots and humanoids will be moving all around us. Our analysis suggests there will likely be 1.3bn AI-robots by 2035 and 4bn by 2050.

There are three big reasons underlying Citi’s forecast: