Your First Humanoid Robot Coworker Will Probably Be Chinese

You're looking at one of the key ways

in which China's AI world differs

from the Western one that I usually cover.

Humanoid robots are already a common sight

at many big events.

For example, when I attended

the World Artificial Intelligence Conference

in Shanghai last year,

humanoids were absolutely everywhere.

Dancing, carrying boxes, walking robot dogs,

and sometimes even punching each other in the face.

Now it's all a bit of a mirage,

as occasionally you'll catch a glimpse

of someone holding a game controller,

giving these robots high-level instructions.

But some experts believe that autonomous humanoids

will have a profound effect

on the global workforce and economy in coming decades.

Morgan Stanley forecasts that there'll

be a billion humanoids in use by 2050,

almost 1/3 of them in China.

Perhaps no humanoid maker has a bigger lead

than Hangzhou-based Unitree,

China's most prominent robotic startup.

While Elon Musk's Optimus

and other US humanoids stagger through their demos,

Unitree's robots are doing sprints,

kung fu kicks, and acrobatic backflips.

What's more, Unitree's robots are remarkably cheap,

costing tens of thousands of dollars,

about a 10th of their US equivalents.

And while US labs are producing impressive AI algorithms

for humanoids, Unitree really

shows China's remarkable advantage

when it comes to actually building them.

Even if Unitree fails,

there are more than 200 other Chinese companies

now developing humanoids,

compared to only 16 in the US.

Unitree's CEO, Wang Xingxing,

who's become something of a celebrity in China,

told me that he became fascinated by robots as a child,

and that while Boston Dynamics was an early inspiration,

by 2023 Unitree's sales of quadrupeds

were 10 times higher than the US companies.

Wang believes that a revolution in robotic intelligence

is also just on the horizon.

Within a few years, he says,

robots won't be performing at trade shows.

They'll be able to do huge amounts of human work.

If he's right,

then Unitree and other Chinese companies

could lead us into this incredibly important new era.