Tools & manufacturing · around 2030
General-purpose factory robots
Projection
Robots that learn a new assembly task from demonstration rather than months of programming.
Industrial robots today do fixed, pre-programmed jobs. Foundation models for control would let one robot switch between tasks, bringing automation to small-batch and varied work.
Why it’s plausible: Vision-language-action models already transfer skills across tasks in labs; it depends on reliability high enough for production lines and on cheaper hands and actuators.
What it built on 7
Related measurements
Training compute of notable AI models Source: Epoch AI, Notable AI Models (CC BY 4.0)
ML hardware FLOP/s per dollar Source: Epoch AI, ML hardware (CC BY 4.0)