Almost a year and a half ago, I shared on this blog a series of experiences from my travels in China and the United States related to advances in robotics.
At the time, I argued that the development of humanoid robots was entering a new phase of acceleration that was transforming industry and, in the medium term, would also transform our daily lives.
Developments over the past 18 months have not only confirmed that impression but also shown that change is advancing even faster than many had imagined.
Robotics has begun to consolidate as a strategic industry, driven by growing investment, specialized supply chains, new artificial intelligence platforms, and industrial policies aimed at accelerating its adoption.
China is probably the clearest example. In barely a year, it multiplied the number of companies developing humanoid robots, created national centers to train systems of “embodied intelligence,” and began producing thousands of units intended primarily for industrial applications.
Companies such as AgiBot have rapidly moved from developing prototypes to manufacturing robots in quantities that, until very recently, would have seemed unthinkable.
The United States, meanwhile, continues to advance according to a different logic. Tesla remains committed to Optimus as a general-purpose platform, while other companies are developing artificial intelligence models specifically designed to enable robots to understand instructions, interpret their surroundings, and learn new tasks with far greater autonomy than before.
This last aspect is probably the most important transformation.
For decades, robots were essentially machines programmed to execute repetitive movements within carefully controlled environments. Today, an entirely different generation is beginning to emerge.
The incorporation of advanced artificial intelligence models allows these machines to observe, reason, learn through demonstration, adapt their behavior, and respond with increasing flexibility to new situations.
In other words, we are no longer witnessing merely an evolution in robotics. We are seeing the convergence of two technological revolutions: artificial intelligence and physical automation.
Its effects are already becoming visible far beyond humanoid robots.
Collaborative robots continue to expand throughout manufacturing, sharing tasks with human workers and increasing plant productivity.
Hospitals are increasingly incorporating robotic systems for surgery, rehabilitation, and laboratory automation. Logistics centers use autonomous vehicles to move goods.
Agriculture is accelerating the adoption of robots for precision spraying, crop monitoring, and harvesting.
Restaurants, hotels, and smart buildings are integrating service robots for specific tasks with increasing ease.
Perhaps for that reason, the relevant question is no longer when we will routinely see a humanoid robot performing household chores. That moment will come sooner or later.
The truly important issue is another: robotics has already begun to transform production processes, logistics, healthcare, commerce, and numerous services, although it often does so almost imperceptibly to those of us outside these sectors.
In Argentina 4.0: The Citizen Revolution (Prometeo, 2013), I argued that, in major technological revolutions, change does not begin when innovation reaches every citizen. It begins much earlier, when it silently alters the way companies produce, compete, and invest.
Naturally, this evolution makes the debate over its regulatory and ethical implications even more urgent.
Alongside questions of safety, privacy, and employment, new concerns are now emerging about responsibility for decisions made by autonomous systems, the protection of the data they continuously collect, and their impact on the organization of work and the distribution of the benefits arising from increased productivity.
The institutional challenge is particularly complex because this new generation of robots combines characteristics that until now were regulated separately: they are physical machines, but also artificial intelligence systems capable of learning, adapting, and acquiring new capabilities after they have been put into operation.
The OECD Principles for trustworthy artificial intelligence establish that these systems should remain safe and robust throughout their entire life cycle and be subject to mechanisms for oversight, traceability, and accountability. The European Union, meanwhile, has begun to articulate its regulation of artificial intelligence with updated rules on machinery safety and liability for defective products.
The challenge is no longer simply to regulate a machine at the time it is manufactured, but to govern systems whose behavior can evolve after they have been put into operation.
Robotics is no longer a long-term promise. It has begun to become a general-purpose technological infrastructure, comparable to what the Internet or smartphones once were.
Understanding this transformation—and preparing ourselves to govern it intelligently—will probably be far more important than trying to guess when a robot will fold our clothes or prepare breakfast.
