“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 couple of futuristic household predicted fairly just a few trendy applied sciences.
The Jetsons lived in a wise house managed by voice assistants. The household known 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 may 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 unimaginable forty years in the past.
Then once more, so did videophones and digital newspapers…
And Rosie may also develop into a family staple before we predict. Humanity is on the verge of one of many greatest technological developments of the brand new millennium.
It’s what I name the “bot-com” revolution.
And it’s taking place before we predict…
Rise of the Robots
Final week’s greatest information was Nvidia’s earnings, because the world is concentrated on developments in synthetic intelligence.
Whereas I listened to the convention name on Wednesday evening, 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 rivals to ChatGPT”.
However then he mentioned one thing I’ve been telling Strategic Fortunes subscribers about for the previous few years:
Common robotics at the moment are turning 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 assume to your self, “Nicely, we have already got robots constructing automobiles in factories and packing up Amazon items in warehouses.”
Nonetheless, these are primitive bots purposely constructed to automate only one job.
The brand new crop of Humanoid robots makes Rosie the Robotic appear like my Roomba. These robots are supposed to appear like and mimic people, which makes them an ideal match for any workspace or house in our trendy world.
Latest advances in robotics and AI have spurned a complete new class of robots that may very well be headed for supply in early 2025.
Meet the First Technology of Dwelling 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 rationale for this skyrocketing progress — advances in AI that may assist these fashions practice themselves. There’s now not a necessity for a human engineer to code all the things by hand.
If these robots can do all the things a human can (and extra), then retail companies is perhaps very …
Walmart Gained’t Be Capable of Resist Robots
Walmart employs about 2.3 million employees worldwide.
And in response to Walmart’s profession web page, the job description for the standard Walmart employee seems to be like this:
“Relying on the shift you’re employed, your job may embrace transferring stock within the backroom, unloading vehicles, fulfilling pick-up orders or serving to members whereas stocking cabinets.”
That appears like the proper 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 features the common worker does, Walmart may ultimately exchange its employees with these robots.
Even with the substitute of simply 1% of the workforce, the financial savings in labor prices may 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 received’t go on strike – effectively, possibly sometime!
It additionally means Walmart would solely must deploy 6,571 bots to interchange 23,000 employees. That is about 1% of their workforce.
If that occurred, the annual labor price financial savings from simply this 1% substitute may very well be about $660 million.
And if we apply this similar math to a 5% substitute state of affairs, the labor price financial savings soar 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 price 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 unit and warehouse duties like those talked about earlier.
Tesla estimates a worth of $25,000 to $30,000 per robotic.
If Walmart have been to get these robots at these costs, below the 1% state of affairs it might solely price Walmart $197 million on the excessive finish for these 6,571 robots.
Underneath the 5% state of affairs, it might solely price 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 might price for human labor.
And in contrast to labor prices, this isn’t a recurring annual expense. It’s is an occasional funding in equipment on your firm — sort of like shopping for a truck for your corporation.
Certain, there could also be upkeep prices concerned, however these wouldn’t be anyplace close to as important as annual labor prices for human employees.
And it’s not simply Walmart that might profit from a lot of these robots.
Goal, Kroger, Amazon, UPS, FedEx and a number of other different corporations may see comparable advantages from such robots.
Contemplating that these corporations already use extremely computerized and machine-driven logistics operations, humanoid robots are simply the subsequent 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 will probably be right here before we predict.
And it seems to be just like the Jetsons predicted the long run but once more.
Till subsequent time,
Ian King
Editor, Strategic Fortunes
