These are personal notes on the latest news on generative AI (late August / early September) and on fundamental trends behind this news. This is a follow-up to this post.

Robotics and generative AI: interlinked

I remember an impactful talk in 2017 by Laurent Alexandre for a commission of the French Senate, where he hammered the economic significance of AI. Still very much worth watching:

In this talk, Laurent Alexandre highlighted a difference in progress rates between AI and robotics: AI is software based (not only, but significantly). Software has an exponential rate of development. In contrast robotics is hardware (largely), which has a slower pace of development. For this reason we should expect great strides on the AI front, and a somewhat less exciting front on robotics. This is how I interpreted the argument and it struck me as a great insight, even if in hindsight I could have derived it from the ‘bits are easier to move than atoms’ adage from 1995.

Anyway, my point is to say that today, in 2025, the development of robotics leveraging generative AI for their “behavior”, especially in China, should not make us draw too sharp a distinction between the domains of AI and robotics in terms of product development and economic impact. Some might react with “duh, of course, Clement, you are the only one who would draw such a silly distinction”.

But may I remind you of the not-so-long-ago period (2015-2022, I’d say) when we were witnessing the quick progress of machine learning in all directions, while on the robotics front we mostly saw Boston Dynamics posting about two videos per year with a robot doing parkour?

In the past months a number of postings made me realize that, especially with ‘generative AI inside,’ robotics is now an industry that is developing in the direction of consumer products and that can change fundamentals of our culture, with humanoid robots. Not just welding arms in factories. A few examples:

September 26, 2024: largest drone display in China

April 2, progress on the Optimus humanoid robot by Tesla

How it started v/s How it's going pic.twitter.com/7sqL3No42q

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) April 2, 2025

April 19, humanoid robots spotted at Beijing’s marathon

A couple of readings in the past weeks have brought the issue to the forefront:

August 16, robotics olympiads in China

August 18, a thread on the “How China bought Germany’s robotics crown jewel”

Quick to read and fascinating:

Thread: How China bought Germany's robotics crown jewel

Quick story: I recently called Kuka German in a thread and got called out - "Kuka is Chinese now."

This sent me down a rabbit hole.

What I found was straight out of Succession, and it reshaped how the West thinks about… pic.twitter.com/CDPUPQR1rd

— Jack 🤖 (@JacklouisP) August 18, 2025

September 2, report on the surge of robotics in China

Quoting from the Financial Times:

Chinese factories are installing about 280,000 industrial robots every year, or half the global total [my emphasis], bringing the country’s robot-to-worker density ahead of Germany and closing in on leader South Korea, according to the International Federation of Robotics.

This video from the article above shows nicely how advanced arm robots are integrated seemingly routinely in non high tech, “regular” factory floors.

September 3, Chinese military parade

The Financial Times notes:

“A range of aerial drones for attack and surveillance were also on display, and many of the ground forces that participated in the parade had autonomous elements in their gear, such as small surveillance drones mounted on tanks and robot dogs carried on the back of electronic warfare equipment.”

September 3, yet another impressive robot demo by Figure

Figure is a US robotics company

What to make of it? My impressions

• given the speed of progress and the competition between China and the US intensifying things, humanoid robots are coming in the not so distant future to consumer culture. That will be progressive but 5 years seem a safe bet to imagine a robot sold at a consumer price for some domestic use, or appearing in some sport event or entertainment setting.
• I now take it for granted that China has surpassed the US in terms of AI x robotics, with the US a close second in 2025.
• intensification of relations between EU and China: commercially, educationally, culturally, … anything that reflects China’s standing as leader on robotics x AI, Europe being the not-so-powerful client in the relation.

• displacement of the equilibrium point in the wealth distribution between China and the rest of the world, in favor of China. Quite logical, and with supportive evidence of two kinds:

  a. development of robotics in China seem not to hurt their labor force (because it complements robots and upskills), quite the contrary:

source: “Homegrown robots help drive China’s global export surge”, Financial Times, September 3, 2025.

Incidentally, we see an opposite trend based on US job data for the employment of junior employees, who seem to be hurt by generative AI:

source: Lichtinger, Guy and Hosseini Maasoum. Generative AI as Seniority-Biased Technological Change: Evidence from U.S. Résumé and Job Posting Data (August 31, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5425555

b. If AI accelerates economic growth, places where AI is the most embedded in production and consumer systems will mostly enact and benefit from this growth. Today, China is exactly this place. California might be vying for the first place, but that still wouldn’t represent the US as a whole.

Conclusion

I wanted to also discuss nano banana, Carrefour, the creation of 3D assets in the latest news but that will be for another time.

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