“Meet George Jetson
His boy, Elroy
Daughter Judy
Jane, his spouse…”
Everyone knows the lyrics from The Jetsons, the Sixties animated sitcom.
Oddly, this present a few futuristic household predicted fairly a couple of fashionable applied sciences.
The Jetsons lived in a wise house managed by voice assistants. The household referred to as one another over videophones and used holograms. They’d smartwatches, robotic vacuum cleaners and even digital newspapers.
And naturally, there was Rosie the Robotic, the Jetson’s robotic maid and housekeeper. She’s one of many household!
Rosie rolled round on wheels and had claw-like arms so she might play sports activities with the Jetson youngsters. She spends many of the day cleansing the home with a feather duster and serving to Jane round the home.
The thought of getting a humanoid robotic like Rosie serving to out with day by day chores appeared inconceivable forty years in the past.
Then once more, so did videophones and digital newspapers…
And Rosie may also turn into a family staple earlier than we expect. Humanity is on the verge of one of many largest technological developments of the brand new millennium.
It’s what I name the “bot-com” revolution.
And it’s occurring earlier than we expect…
Rise of the Robots
Final week’s largest information was Nvidia’s earnings, because the world is targeted on developments in synthetic intelligence.
Whereas I listened to the convention name on Wednesday night time, I spotted that one thing that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang mentioned was the true, untold story.
When one of many analysts requested him how Wall Avenue ought to take into consideration an eventual return on funding on all of the chip spending, he paused for a second after which began checking off an inventory of issues we already knew, together with “Generative AI,” “frontier fashions” and “extra opponents to ChatGPT”.
However then he mentioned one thing I’ve been telling Strategic Fortunes subscribers about for the previous few years:
Common robotics are actually changing into the bodily manifestation of AI in the true world.
The rise of the robots is right here, and the world’s most necessary CEO is now proclaiming it.
Now, you would possibly suppose to your self, “Properly, we have already got robots constructing vehicles in factories and packing up Amazon items in warehouses.”
Nonetheless, these are primitive bots purposely constructed to automate only one process.
The brand new crop of Humanoid robots makes Rosie the Robotic seem like my Roomba. These robots are supposed to seem like and mimic people, which makes them an ideal match for any workspace or house in our fashionable world.
Latest advances in robotics and AI have spurned an entire new class of robots that could possibly be headed for supply in early 2025.
Meet the First Technology of Residence Service Robots
Analysis agency Skyquest predicts the worldwide humanoid market will rise 25-fold from $2.3 billion in 2023 to $58.95 billion by 2031.
The explanation for this skyrocketing progress — advances in AI that can assist these fashions practice themselves. There’s not a necessity for a human engineer to code every part by hand.
If these robots can do every part a human can (and extra), then retail firms may be very …
Walmart Gained’t Be In a position to Resist Robots
Walmart employs about 2.3 million employees worldwide.
And based on Walmart’s profession web page, the job description for the everyday Walmart employee seems like this:
“Relying on the shift you’re employed, your job might embody transferring stock within the backroom, unloading vehicles, fulfilling pick-up orders or serving to members whereas stocking cabinets.”
That seems like the right job description for humanoid robots.
If we assume that Walmart’s common wage charge is $15 per hour, that provides as much as annual labor prices of about $100 billion for its 100% human workforce.
But when a humanoid robotic is ready to fulfill all of the capabilities the typical worker does, Walmart might ultimately exchange its employees with these robots.
Even with the alternative of simply 1% of the workforce, the financial savings in labor prices could be huge.
A robotic can work 7,000 hours per yr versus solely 2,000 hours for a human employee.
Robots don’t want healthcare. They don’t want retirement plans. They gained’t go on strike – effectively, possibly sometime!
It additionally means Walmart would solely must deploy 6,571 bots to switch 23,000 employees. That is about 1% of their workforce.
If that occurred, the annual labor value financial savings from simply this 1% alternative could possibly be about $660 million.
And if we apply this similar math to a 5% alternative situation, the labor value financial savings leap to about $3.3 billion yearly!
Now you could be questioning about the price of the robots, however that’s chump change in comparison with the labor value financial savings.
Let’s take the instance of the humanoid robotic Tesla is engaged on — Optimus 2 — as a result of it’s being constructed particularly for manufacturing facility and warehouse duties like those talked about earlier.
Tesla estimates a worth of $25,000 to $30,000 per robotic.
If Walmart had been to get these robots at these costs, underneath the 1% situation it will solely value Walmart $197 million on the excessive finish for these 6,571 robots.
Beneath the 5% situation, it will solely value Walmart $986 million.
Even when we assume a Cybertruck-like fiasco for Tesla, with the robots costing twice as a lot as Musk initially estimated, that’s nonetheless solely about 60% of what it will value for human labor.
And in contrast to labor prices, this isn’t a recurring annual expense. It’s is an occasional funding in equipment in your firm — type of like shopping for a truck for your corporation.
Positive, there could also be upkeep prices concerned, however these wouldn’t be wherever close to as important as annual labor prices for human employees.
And it’s not simply Walmart that might profit from these kind of robots.
Goal, Kroger, Amazon, UPS, FedEx and a number of other different corporations might see comparable advantages from such robots.
Contemplating that these corporations already use extremely computerized and machine-driven logistics operations, humanoid robots are simply the following logical addition to these ecosystems.
When you concentrate on how a lot corporations can save by including humanoid robots, the one conclusion is that the “bot-com” revolution might be right here earlier than we expect.
And it seems just like the Jetsons predicted the long run but once more.
Till subsequent time,
Ian King
Editor, Strategic Fortunes
