Humanoid robots have not been getting the attention they deserve since the advent of LLM-based AI, but they could end up being a massive industry.
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, known for his bold predictions and early investment in companies including DoorDash, Instacart, Stripe and OpenAI, has said that the bipedal robot industry will dwarf the automotive industry within the next two decades. His projection, which anticipates a world with at least a billion humanoid robots, underscores the potential for a seismic shift in labor and productivity. Interestingly, this aligns with equally bold predictions by Elon Musk, who believes there will eventually be five humanoid robots for every human on Earth.
“I think that this business of bipedal robots will be larger than the auto industry within 20 years, and the auto industry doesn’t know it,” he said. “So when we have a billion bipedal robots – and I think that’s an underestimate – first these robots will do more work than all of the manual labor humanity does across 7 billion people today. The capacity for labor goes up dramatically,” he added.
A world with a billion or more humanoid robots, as Khosla is describing, would transform industries ranging from manufacturing and logistics to healthcare and personal services. The increased labor capacity could lead to unprecedented economic growth, potentially solving labor shortages and boosting productivity across various sectors. Robots could handle hazardous tasks, providing 24/7 care for the elderly, or construct buildings with speed and precision beyond human capability.
Elon Musk is even more bullish on humanoid robots, particularly Tesla’s Optimus range of robots. “I actually think humanoid robots will be the biggest product ever in history, by far,” he has said. “You can just say, well, every human is gonna want one, and some will want two. And then there’ll be all of the industry in terms of making and providing products and services. So you have to say, what’s the ratio of humanoid robots to humans? It could even be five to one. So we’re talking about 20, 30 billion humanoid robots,” he had said explained.
However, this humanoid robot revolution also raises critical questions. Humans who see their jobs displaced by these robots might need to find other ways to make money and sustain themselves. Also, it would be wise to ensure that these humanoid robots don’t have the capacity to collaborate among themselves and harm their human creators. But given the pace at which this industry is growing, particularly in China, a day with billions of such robots roaming around with us might not be too far away.