ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute
John Lee
THE COMING ROBOT REVOLUTION
Over the past decade, robots have played a growing role in Southeast Asia, primarily in manufacturing. Singapore, which has had a national robotics programme promoting development of robots and ‘embodied artificial intelligence (AI)’, is the second-ranked country worldwide for robot density relative to workforce.[1] Malaysia has a National Robotics Roadmap 2021-2030, which aims to ‘extract the value of robotics as the key enabling technology and catalyst for the nation’s productivity (and) competitiveness’.[2]
Several ASEAN countries now have robotics startups supplying the manufacturing, logistics and service sectors.[3] Yet as in many fields, Southeast Asian capacities in robotics and ‘embodied AI’ are tied to supply chains and technical progress concentrated in the world’s largest economies.
Rapid advances in AI centred in the US and China now promise to expand the range of tasks and situations in which robots can viably replace humans. Combined with advances in supporting elements like sensing technologies and batteries, this has made 2025 “the year of proof that the robot can do it”.[4] Highlighting this trend are the humanoid robot demonstrations in China that have captured global media attention.[5]
Simultaneously, prominent voices in the Western world are steering public expectations away from the prospect of ‘artificial general intelligence’ (AGI) and towards more prosaic applications of AI. In July, the CEO of the EU’s most valuable company, software giant SAP, said that Europe will not reap AI’s benefits simply by building data centres, and should focus on applying AI to existing sectors such as automotive manufacturing.[6]
The same month, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreesen urged a focus on using AI to transform manufacturing, saying that if the US does not lead a new AI-powered industrial revolution, it will fall behind in a world dominated by Chinese robots.[7] This concern about pending Chinese dominance echoes that expressed in April by Elon Musk, whose Tesla is among the global leaders in developing humanoid robots.[8]
And in August, Eric Schmidt – a former Google CEO and leading advocate that the US is in a sprint with China to reach AGI[9] – co-authored a piece declaring that Silicon Valley “needs to stop obsessing over superhuman AI.”[10] Schmidt now says that US industry must compete with China “on deploying existing [AI] technology across traditional and emerging sectors, from manufacturing and agriculture to robotics and drones.”
These comments stand out from a backdrop of growing doubts about how profits will be generated from the huge investments going into AI development and infrastructure, mainly high-end chips and the data centres that house them. Estimates for expenditure globally on data centres over the next 3-5 years range from 1.4 to 3 trillion USD.[11]
Such a vast spend is unlikely to generate a return on investment without major reductions in the human workforce, especially given the lack of profitable scaled applications for extant AI tools like ChatGPT.[12] In developed economies, this implies automating ‘white collar work’ rather than rapid adoption of robotics, even if the latter eventually follows. AI’s spread in these countries also faces growing public suspicion.[13]
No comments:
Post a Comment