Artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and humanoid robots are general-purpose technologies, which means their implications will be felt society-wide rather than within any single industry. Preparing for that starts with acting now, while we still have a grace period, and adopting a clear guiding principle: protect people, not jobs, firms, or industries, because the jobs and the incumbents cannot be saved, but people can be looked after.

To address the disruptions these technologies will generate, we should, among other things:

• Invest in education and training to prepare people for a changing economy, equipping them for new roles during the transition and, increasingly, for a future in which work itself becomes more of a choice, which means prioritizing adaptability and lifelong learning over narrow training for jobs that may not last.
• Develop new social policies to provide for people who can no longer find work as the marginal cost of labor falls toward zero, including serious debate and piloting of mechanisms such as broad income support and shared ownership of productive capital.
• Pass regulations that ensure the enormous gains in productivity are shared widely rather than concentrated among a small group of owners, since that concentration of wealth and power is one of the central dangers of the transition.
• Govern the risks directly. Because humanoid robots are dual-use, a robotic workforce is also a latent robotic army, so safeguards around control, security against hijacking, and limits on autonomous force are essential. And rather than trying to ban or freeze the technology, which fails to stop it and only cedes the lead to others, societies should steer and regulate specific dangerous applications, much as the world phased out ozone-depleting chemicals without un-inventing the underlying chemistry.
• Prepare materially by investing in robotics and the parallel clean-energy build-out that powers it, so the promised abundance is real and broadly available.

No one holds the complete blueprint, and the distribution questions in particular remain genuinely contested, which is all the more reason to debate them openly and democratically now rather than assuming they will resolve themselves.

Ultimately, societies that adapt to the changes brought about by humanoid robots will be the ones that prosper, while those that cling to the old ways will face economic stagnation and social unrest.

Explore the evidence...

• The framework for preparing society, including the principle of protecting people rather than jobs, the choice between a soft landing and catastrophe, and the call to rethink the social contract, runs throughout our insights into humanoid robotics. Read the insights here.
• Our blog The Painful Truth about AI & Robotics makes the central point that the disruption could be catastrophic or could deliver shared superabundance, and that which outcome we get depends on the choices we make now. Read the blog here.

• On the hardest piece, sharing the prosperity, RethinkX Director of Research Adam Dorr argues that society must stop equating a person's value with their economic output, a discussion he develops with David Orban. Listen here.

• Preparing materially also means investing deliberately. Our analysis of the return on investment in humanoid robotics explains why nations that invest will be far better positioned than those that hold back. Read How much should we invest in humanoid robotics? here.
• Governing a technology's harms through collective choice is both possible and proven. The Montreal Protocol, widely regarded as the most successful environmental treaty, phased out the vast majority of ozone-depleting substances and put the ozone layer on track to recover, showing that societies can steer a technology even when they cannot uninvent it. Read about the Montreal Protocol here.
• For a practical conversation about navigating this transition while keeping people at the center, watch Factory reset: The machines are ready — are we? with Adam Dorr on the People B4 Machines podcast.

Witness the transformation

In the span of just fifteen years, the working horse went from providing the vast majority of road travel to a tiny fraction of it. The automobile had arrived, and the fate of the horse was sealed. We are now on the cusp of a disruption every bit as swift and complete, except this time, we humans are the horses.

A convergence of sensors, computing, actuators, and batteries now gives humanoid robots the capability to perform both cognitive and physical work. AI is already taking on cognitive tasks once reserved for people, and humanoid robots are bringing the same capability to physical tasks. For the first time, the supply of available labor can expand as fast as machines can be built and trained. These systems are already approaching cost parity with human labor across much of the global economy, and their cost will keep falling while their capability keeps rising.

This is about far more than cheaper labor. Robots will create an entirely new and vastly larger labor system in which the marginal cost of labor approaches zero. The result will be a sweeping tide of falling costs, rising quality, and explosive productivity that forms the foundation of an era of superabundance. The nations, industries, and individuals who recognize this early, and who choose to protect people rather than jobs, will be best positioned to navigate the transformation and capture its extraordinary benefits.

Learn more about the disruption of labor and its implications for jobs, society, and the economy.