Teslabots Building and Operating Gigafactories is the Technological Singularity

RethinkX projects a 20 year disruption of the global labor market by humanoid robots. RethinkX projects about one billion humanoid robots by 2045-2055. I, Brian Wang of Nextbigfuture, observed the key starting point of a Technological Singularity that would transform human civilization, Mars and enable the full colonization of the Solar System.

I will review RethinkX making the case for economic transformation to humanoid robots taking over and expanding human labor. I then discuss how this would overlap the point where humanity can become truly exponential.

What is needed for the start of a fully exponential civilization is 1000 times less than what is described by RethinkX.

One million humanoid bots should be plenty to kickstart the exponential civilization. They need to be able operate and build factories and operate autonomous mining and construction machinery. We need to create a simplified supply chain of few minerals and metals for batteries and other components. Partial non-exponential aspects like needing humans to build and operate semiconductor chip fabs would not be that limiting on the other aspects that are exponential.

First Reviewing the RethinkX Highlights

RethinkX projects humanoid robots will enter the market at a cost-capability of under $10/hour for their labor, on a trajectory to under $1/hour before 2035 and under $0.10/hour before 2045.

This alone makes the disruption of a substantial fraction of human labor inevitable. Humanoid robots will work more than three times as many hours per week as a person, in any conditions, without vacation or illness or complaint – for a total of perhaps 7,000 hours per year. But at the same time that cost is falling, capability will also be growing. At first, humanoid robots will only be able to perform relatively simple tasks. But with each day that passes, their capabilities will grow, until by the 2040s they will be able to do virtually anything a human can do – and much more besides.

Just as internal combustion engines gave automobiles the capability to disrupt horses, a convergence of technologies that together create what we call a labor engine is what gives humanoid robots the capability to disrupt human labor. The critical disruptive components of the new labor engine include:

Sensors (cameras, tilt sensors, pressure sensors, microphones, accelerometers, etc.) to take in sensory data

Computer hardware and software to process sensory data with powerful AI

Actuators to move and interact with objects in the environment

Batteries and power electronics to provide energy for hours of sensing, computing, and moving

Each of these technologies has gotten dramatically cheaper and more powerful in recent years, setting the stage for the disruption of labor.

Over the next 15-20 years, humanoid robots will disrupt human labor throughout hundreds of industries across every major sector of the global economy.

Humanoid robots won’t just displace human jobs. Instead, they will create an entirely new and vastly larger and more capable labor system.

Nextbigfuture Described Truly Exponential Humanity Beyond the RethinkX Humanoid Robot Labor Forecast

RethinkX says it is impossible to know in advance the full details of how the new labor system will differ from today, but the key feature is: the marginal cost of labor will rapidly approach zero.

Elon Musk described the thousand Starship fleets going to Mars every two years at a SpaceX presentation last month.

A million person city on Mars is what Elon Musk and SpaceX have described. They talk about it being sustainable. This means all of the mining and gigafactories need to be there. There must be a simplified human supply chain on Mars. This is the seed that is needed to replicate and build more and more Gigafactories for Starships, humanoid bots and machines.

Twenty-six doublings from the sustainable Mars City and Gigafactories is the 10 trillion bot colonization of the Solar System. This can be completed by 2100.