Your first human-like robot co-worker will likely be Chinese

But linguistic models can only do so much, and what robots urgently need is a new kind of model that understands the physical world the way MA students understand the written word. To build this model, engineers need more data. As I walked around BAAI, I saw dozens of workers behind their desks. They operate various robotic arms and handles to teach algorithms simple manipulative tasks such as sweeping beans on the table, pouring liquids from a jug into different cups, and picking up items from shelves. A young man wearing a virtual reality headset appears to be preparing tea while a camera records his every move. The idea is that with enough training data, robots will know how to do all kinds of things without specific training.

The problem is that no one quite knows what data is most useful to robots, let alone how much it needs or how best to collect it. For humanoid robots to become ubiquitous, people need to invent devices that better mimic the human hand. For a robot, doing a backflip is much easier than flipping a coin.

However, Tony Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Sunday Robotics, a California-based startup, told me he worries that companies like his don’t stand a chance against Chinese companies, which can bring in more workers, like BAAI’s telecommunications operators, to train robot models and roll out new devices quickly. “The United States is losing there in the speed of repetition,” he says. “Honestly, I don’t know how we can win.”

In an effort to keep pace, Zhao recently hired an executive from a Chinese robotics company with deep connections and experience tapping into China’s vast and complex supply chain. “The only way we can beat Chinese companies is to build a Chinese team,” he says.

Some US CEOs, including Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind and Laci Groom of Physical Intelligence, both of whom are chasing the GBT bot moment, told me that they imagine the evolution of robotics roughly mirroring the evolution of smartphones, with China making the hardware and the US making the brains. (Except Huawei now makes both.)

The answer may be that the US government needs to get involved, suggests Jonathan Hirst, co-founder and chief robotics officer at Agility, which makes humanoid robots. He envisions, among other things, significant investment in advanced domestic manufacturing, such as tax incentives for companies that use robots in their warehouses and factories, as a way to support local robotics companies. Such a strategy might begin to mimic the patient capital investment the Chinese government spends in its industries. “We have to be very smart about automation,” he says. “It’s the only way.”

The hotel I was staying at in Beijing, in the high-tech hub of Zhongguancun, did not have any of the wheeled robots that routinely deliver items to guest rooms in some major city hotels. Instead, I had an unfailingly polite human named Stephen. When I needed to clean my shirt, Stephen got the job done within a few hours. When I returned home at the end of my trip, I thought about how many hands had washed, ironed, packed and transported the clothes again so quickly. Even in China, robots have not yet won.

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