How to maintain your leadership, Protectionism?
While China injects billions into artificial intelligence and robotics, the United States faces an urgent dilemma, how to maintain its technological leadership in the face of a global race that accelerates every day, giants such as Tesla, Boston Dinamic, Agility Robotics and other North American companies met with legislators in Washington to give a clear message, the United States needs a national robotics strategy.
Now the warning is not symbolic, with China's growing dominance in this sector, experts say that the next generation of humanoid and autonomous robots could define the global economy and whoever is at the forefront will lead the future.
In my latest publications it has been noted that China is not only copying North American technologies and making them cheaper with inferior quality as in the past, the Asian country has turned robotics and technology into national properties, in 2023 China already had more than 1.8 million active industrial robots and announced a fund of 138,000 million dollars for robotics, AI and emerging technologies.
And the United States is being left behind as North American robotics leaders fear despite its tradition in automation, for example, General Motors implemented the first industrial robot in 1961, the United States has been losing ground to Japan, Europe and now China, without a coordinated response this trend could be repeated in AI-driven robotics.
The current scenario.
The companies propose the creation of a sector-specific federal agency focused on funding academic and commercial research, workforce training programs in robotics, AI, and incentives for large-scale domestic production, moving from prototypes to market.
Jonathan Chen of Tesla, responsible for the Optimus robot project, was direct: "You can create incredible robots, but the question is who will be able to scale them and deliver them to the population at an affordable price? Without infrastructure and incentive policies, the United States runs the risk of seeing its innovations stagnate in laboratories while China puts thousands of robots on the streets and factories and this is already happening in the Asian country. In addition to industrial robots, China has already started mass production of humanoid and quadruped robots for applications in transportation, health, care. customer and security.
With the direct support of the government, Chinese companies have access to subsidies, infrastructure and data on a large scale, a competitive advantage that is difficult to ignore. Jeff Cardenas of Etronic recalled that the United States paved the way for automation but lost leadership in industrial robotics to Japan and Europe, the race is now for physics and what is at stake again is world leadership but this time in something much more serious, investing in robotics and it is no longer just an economic issue, it is a question of strategic security, qualified jobs and technological independence.
The proposal.
The proposals defined by North American businessmen include the establishment of a national robotics plan with clear objectives, public-private alliances to accelerate adoption in strategic sectors, federal subsidies for advanced robotics AI startups, creation of test zones and innovation centers with tax incentives.
The physical manifestation of artificial intelligence is arriving, whether in the form of humanoid robots, robotic buts or industrial and aerial automata, it could revolutionize factories, hospitals, cities, even the military sector, the race for intelligent machines has just entered the radar of what until now has been the greatest world power, the United States, but this is a real dispute for technological and economic power and China, considered the rising world power, already has both feet on the accelerator.
