We have seen many previous disruptions by major foundational technologies, from electricity and the steam engine to the internal combustion engine, silicon transistor-based computing, and smartphones, where the heart of the uptake period is over a couple of decades, even though the consequences play out over a much longer time. That pattern is remarkably consistent. Once a technology becomes both cheaper and more capable than what came before, adoption follows an S-curve that typically runs its course over roughly 15 to 20 years.

There is every indication that improvements in the performance of artificial intelligence and robotics are happening at least as quickly as in any example we have seen, and that the costs of the underlying technologies, including computer processors, digital cameras, actuators, and batteries, are falling dramatically as well. The result is likely to be the explosive adoption of humanoid robots and other AI-powered machinery such as autonomous electric vehicles, the robotaxis.

In concrete terms, that means meaningful deployment is happening now and will scale through the remainder of this decade, with widespread disruption playing out across the 2030s. On our projections, the cost of robot labor falls below $1 an hour before 2035 and below 10 cents an hour before 2045, by which point the disruption is largely complete. The deeper social and economic consequences, as with every foundational technology before it, will continue to unfold well beyond that.

These disruptions, in fact, have already begun, and faster than expected. AI has moved from novelty chatbots to doing real cognitive work, drafting documents, writing code, and handling customer service across the economy. Robotaxi services have moved from pilots to rapid commercial scaling, and humanoid robots have moved from polished demonstrations to shipping products whose costs are collapsing.

Explore the evidence...

• The consistent 15-to-20-year shape of technology disruptions are mapped across hundreds of disruptions in The Pattern of Progress: How Radically Cheaper, Easier, Faster, Better Technologies and Ideas Rapidly Change the World by Bradd Libby. Also check out the Pattern of Disruption: Convergence of Technologies widget that shows how seemingly unrelated technologies are connected through history

• The specific cost-and-capability trajectory for humanoid robots through 2035 and 2045, are laid out across our insights into humanoid robotics. Read the insights here.
• RethinkX Director of Research Adam Dorr discusses why it typically takes around 15 years for a market like this to mature, and why today's clunky early robots resemble the early internet and first smartphones. 

• The pattern that makes adoption so rapid once a technology is cheaper and better, drawing on the historical parallels of electricity displacing whale oil and the automobile displacing the horse, is explained here. 

• The robotaxi disruption is already scaling steeply. As of early 2026, Waymo reported providing about 500,000 paid robotaxi rides every week across 10 US cities, a tenfold increase from roughly 50,000 per week two years earlier, with further expansion underway. See the ridership data here.
  Check out the Disruption of Transportation for more insights on A-EVs
• Humanoid robots are following the same curve. Industry reporting shows their prices have fallen sharply as production scales, with one major manufacturer's average price dropping from about $85,000 in 2023 to roughly $25,000 in 2025, and Goldman Sachs noting manufacturing costs fell around 40% in a single year. Read the market analysis here.

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.