Robots and Artificial Intelligence: It’s the Way of the World

Robots aren’t just science fiction anymore. R2-D2 and C-3PO from the movie Star Wars? Helper robots from AI? Robots that seek to understand you, like in Her? In 2017, robots have gone beyond movie fantasies and into our daily lives.

Robotics and artificial intelligence are exciting new fields that are currently enabling machines to work alongside people in a variety of manufacturing industries including automotive and electronics production.

Pretty soon, robots and other thinking machines will be helping everywhere, assisting in health care, energy production, even farming.  

Robots, robots, everywhere

A new study from consultancy PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) about artificial intelligence predicts the world is on the cusp of enormous change, driven by robots and the next generation of thinking computers. The study forecasts enormous productivity gains for economies across the globe as robots and artificial intelligence enable greater efficiency.

The two countries expected to benefit most from advances in artificial intelligence are the United States and China, also the two largest economies in the world. But emerging markets have an opportunity to ramp up really fast.

Here are some highlights from the report:

Robots and artificial intelligence will drive $15.7 trillion of global economic gains by 2030. Roughly half of these gains will come from increases in productivity. The other half will come from increased consumer demand as products become more specialized and targeted to individual buyers.

While all economies in the world will experience the economic impact from smarter machines, China and the U.S. will experience 70% of the total GDP gains. PWC estimates the U.S. will see economic increases worth $3.7 trillion. China will see nearly twice as much economic gain, valued at $7 trillion.

Emerging market economies, or nations whose economies are still developing, stand to gain the most from robotics and artificial intelligence. Think of it this way: advanced economies like the U.S. already have extremely sophisticated systems in place for manufacturing, production, and delivery of services.

Developing nations have a huge opportunity to become market leaders by adopting artificial intelligence in processes more quickly.