Move Over, Humans. China's Robots Are Taking Over
4/29/202620 min
In China, humanoid robots are on the rise. Robots with heads and torsos have been spotted staffing the front desk at hotels, working factory floors, and serving lattes. It's all thanks to an investment boom and subsidies from the Chinese government, which is betting on "embodied AI" as the next frontier in a global arms race. WSJ's Yoko Kubota explains how China's robots got so good, and what the US is doing to catch up. Ryan Knutson hosts. Further Listening:
- China and the U.S. Are in a Race for AI Supremacy - The Man Leading Trump’s AI Charge Against China Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsRyan Knutson· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Our colleague Yoko Kubota was in Beijing a few months ago and visited a strange place.
Yoko Kubota· Guest0:11
So it's actually only open on the weekends, and you have to book a tour. It's very competitive to book this tour.
Ryan Knutson· Host0:21
Yoko went to a mall, but not just any mall. This mall was filled with robots.
Yoko Kubota· Guest0:29
[upbeat music] It's basically an exhibition, um, of all kinds of different robots that China has to offer. On the first floor you could see, uh, for instance, household robots that can do, you know, certain types of tasks like clean the house or, um, you know, make coffee, et cetera. And the other thing I guess that was personally more impressive is probably the robots that are able to sort out medicine, some robots that are able to conduct some dental surgery or, you know, operations, um- A, a, a robot dentist? [laughs] Yeah, robot dentist, basically. [laughs] You can go to the second floor. Um, there they show robots that are a bit more fun. So I saw one where, um, a robot was wearing a Michael Jordan jersey and,