Robots: taking our jobs or a source of income?

How robots impact our lives is, along with AI, arguably the biggest question facing human kind.

Tony Seba and the team at RethinkX have just published one of the clearest and most profound pieces on the role robots will play in our lives. You can read it here, or my much briefer summary below::

• Massive change: we are on the cusp of one of the biggest distruptions in human history, with humanoid robots replacing us to do physical labor.

• Cost efficient: humanoid robots will enter the market at less than $10/hour, and will likely cost less than $1/hour before 2035 and $0.10/hour before 2045. They will never be more expensive or less capable than they are now.

• New labor system: robots will usher in a completely new phase of industry, launching new business models, new institutions and new metrics. The marginal cost of labor will rapidly approach zero.

• Everything will get cheaper: if the cost of labor is going down and output increases (they will work 3x hours more per week than humans), it will create a wave of supply driven deflationary pressure.

• Quality is better: robots will perform each task to the best of their ability each and every time.

• Productivity skyrockets: despite ongoing productivity gains throughout history, it has always been capped by human labor, until now. Labor will grow as fast as we can build robots.

• Age of super abundance: ever increasing labor efficiency in transportation, energy and food will create an era of abundance and prosperity that has hitherto been unimaginable outside of science fiction.

• Some of our big prolems can get solved: ageing populations mean declining workforces, and addressing climate change requires a huge technology shift towards renewable energy, mobility and battery use - both of these things can be aided by the use of robots.

• Impact on jobs: initially - say the next decade - robots will be used to fill the shortage of humans rather than directly replacing them, but soon enough our utility will become limited and AI enabled robots will replace many of us in our jobs. Governments will need to manage these transitions carefully, openly accepting the existential impact on jobs and preparing the world for a soft landing.

There are some other comments on the impact on nation states and competitiveness I won’t go into here, but you get the gist: it’s coming fast, going to be even more impactful than the internet, and the level of disruption will be extreme (both in positive and potentially, negative ways).

You can own a part of the robot and take its earnings

In the context of the predictions made above, it was therefore particularly good timing to discover a new DePIN project called Xmaquina. It is potentially the first company in the world to launch the concept of owning a part of a robot, in return for a share of its earnings.

The only discussion I’ve seen on this elsewhere is a future in which we own our autonomous car and rent it out as a robo taxi.

Xmaquina launched in April 2024 and then used the Token2049 conference in Dubai to launch the world’s first tokenised, autonomous robot operating a cafe (image below). Essentially the idea is that if you tokenise ownership, allowing anyone to buy a share of the robot, then owners can recieve income from every cup of coffee sold.

Xmaquina partnered with Peaq network - a leading Layer 1 DePIN focused blockchain - to launch the project, and while only a demonstration, it is a sign of what may come: a world where we can all benefit from robot workers rather than just the big companies that employ them.

This is enabled by two key blockchain trends / technologies:

• DePIN - which I have explained before and enables physical assets to operate independently while contributing to a wider network; and

• Real World Assets (RWA) - allows assets to be owned fractionally by many people via blockchain (this is crowdfunding on the blockchain).

According to Xmaquina, the platform could apply to any kind of robot, although they are initially focusing on hospitality, service, logistics and agriculture. This gives businesses a source of funding for their robot workforce, and democratises access to the enormous capital this workforce will generate.

Thinking about the kind of robots this could apply to which we already know exist:

• Delivery drones

• Farm workers (harvesting, spraying, monitoring)

• Hospitality robots (clearning, security and delivery)

• Aged care robots (companion robots)

• Logistics (warehouse workers - packers, stackers, drivers etc)

It is the same as crowdfunding a business and offering perks or rewards to your funders (ie. Kickstarter style), but this model uses blockchain to record fractional ownership, track actions like work completed, and issue / record payment to the owner.

Xmaquina’s website is currently asking people to join their Whitelist so I will watch this one with interest as the concept threatens to significantly impact our future, and hopefully help to allay fears of robots taking our jobs without any direct upside or compensation.

It wil be critical to see the first numbers on this - how much would you need to invest, and how much could you earn.

I hope this was interesting and if you have 10 seconds please help by choosing one of the options below to help my keep track of whether I’m on the right path.

Jack

ilitates the tokenization and deployment of a diverse array of autonomous robots suited for various industries. While our initial focus includes a robo-cafe showcased in our pilot project, the platform is versatile enough to accommodate robots used in sectors such as hospitality, service, logistics, and agriculture. This flexibility allows for broad applications across different operational