China needs 24 million robots to survive.

To avoid collapse

For most of the world, the rise of humanoid robots still seems like a debate about the future, for China it is beginning to be treated as a matter of economic survival and perhaps that is what makes a new report from Barclays so impressive. According to the study, China may need to deploy nearly 24 million humanoid robos through 2035 to compensate for the gradual collapse of its workforce.

We are not just talking about traditional industrial automation, we are talking about population substitution on a national scale. For decades, the Chinese economy grew supported by an almost perfect combination of gigantic population, abundant labor and massive industrial production, but now the country is facing a severe demographic change. The population is aging rapidly, the number of young people is declining and the workforce is beginning to shrink at a worrying rate.

According to Barclays itself, China may lose approximately 37 million workers over the next decade, and this is where physical artificial intelligence comes into play, because the new humanoids are no longer those rigid robotic arms tied to isolated assembly lines, the new generation was designed precisely to operate in environments originally built for humans, they walk, carry boxes, use tools, climb stairs, manipulate delicate objects and continuously learn through neural networks.

It is the third phase of automation. Physically adaptive machines integrated directly into the human economy and the financial mathematics behind it are starting to become surprisingly viable, according to the report, the average cost of manufacturing humanoids has fallen dramatically in recent years.

Analysts believe that until the end of the decade many of these robots could cost less than several current luxury cars and that completely changes the economic calculation of companies, because a synthetic worker does not sleep, does not age, but depreciates, does not go on strike and can operate continuously connected to central collective learning systems. At the same time, each deployed robot generates new data, improves algorithms, and further reduces future automation costs—it's an exponential cycle.

The most interesting thing is to note how this transcends China itself, because building tens of millions of humanoids requires a gigantic amount of batteries, motors, sensors, semiconductors and strategic metals. The effects of this economic reconfiguration will resonate far beyond Chinese borders, according to estimates by Morgan Stanley bank, the massive use of physics will expand China's participation in global manufacturing up to 16% by 2030, however, to build 24 million robots, the consumption of natural resources will be devastating.

For the first time, humanity will depend on synthetic humanoids for its growth.

Reports from Bloomberg and Barclays indicate that raw materials exporting countries will be the big indirect winners of this race, nations rich in essential minerals such as Chile, Peru, Indonesia and Brazil will experience economic growth in demand for metals essential for hardware infrastructure.

In practice, the advancement of the Y can reorganize not just jobs, but entire global chains of energy, mining, logistics and technological production and there is something deeply symbolic in all this, for centuries, economies grew by expanding human populations, now we begin to enter an era where economic growth perhaps increasingly depends on the expansion of synthetic workers.

“The silicon army described by Barclays represents the scenario of maximum biological substitution, ever projected by a global bank, even if only half of that goal is achieved, the economic mechanism of the planet will have changed forever” Do you think that the global economy will be able to sustain itself through synthetic workers? or there is more going on behind the curtains.