Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Heralding Dawn of the Age of Robots in 2026!

The dawn of the Robotic Age is about to break. The old year’s scientific achievements set the stage and the world is poised now on the brink of a brave new era whose makers proclaim that Man will manufacture men -- and women too -- in 2026.

As the New Year dawned, US President Donald Trump seemed to have legally escaped being dragged into the criminal activities of the American financier and convicted child sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, and his affiliates. But violence had already shattered the peace from Bondi Beach in Sydney to Bangladesh when the most advanced humanoid robot ever created took his first hesitant steps to match the miracle of Creation. The threat of further violence darkened the horizon when Mr Trump vowed not to rule out war in his determination to oust Venezuela’s President, Nicolás Maduro. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva warned of “catastrophic consequences” if not content with making a grab for Greenland and seizing more tankers, the US also insists on regime change in Caracas. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa refused to hand over the G-20 presidentship to Mr Trump, who boycotted the summit, prompting Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney to declare that “the world can move on without the United States”.

Although playing at cops and robbers in its own backyard, China spent a busy year planning for robots to compensate for the demographic decline caused by low birth rates, an aging population and rural-to-urban migration.

Now, the Chinese are urged to be ready for what must be the most stunning revolution since Mesopotamian potters designed the wheel over 5,000 years ago or Hindu savants invented the philosophical concept of zero (“sunya”), without ever hearing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. If the dream of a robotic world shows any sign of collapsing, the timid might claim that while puny Man can compete with his maker; the maker is above such folly. “His state/ Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed/ And post o’er land and ocean without rest:/ They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Not that Milton’s devotion to divinity even in blindness can be expected to intimidate a global adventurer like the world’s richest man, the South Africa-born tycoon Elon Musk, whose on-again, off-again bromance (as the word goes) with Donald Trump might have been amusing if it were not also both pointless and potentially perilous. Elon Musk’s primary robot company, Tesla, developed the humanoid robot Optimus (also called Tesla Bot) for tasks that many Westerners feel are too dangerous or repetitive for their workers and even for Indian labourers, whose soaring remittances from the Persian Gulf and other sweatshops probably make manpower India’s most profitable export.

With global unemployment hovering around 4.9 per cent, representing some 186-188 million jobless people, and with even higher rates for youth (around 13 per cent) and women, especially in developing nations, no one is likely to turn up his (her?) nose at a job for being tedious or dull. Certainly, no Indian can afford to be choosy, no matter how bravely the saffron flag might flutter over the supposedly “viksit” landscape of Uttar Pradesh where more than 15 lakh -- 15,75,760 to be precise -- young stalwarts turned up to apply for 4,543 vacancies that chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s government had advertised.

Ever optimistic, Elon Musk sees Optimus as a major artificial intelligence product, leveraging Tesla’s existing AI and hardware expertise, with goals to eventually eliminate poverty and people the future with millions of robots. He should be invited to India. So should Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bibi to his cronies, who recently sealed his reputation for global lawlessness by sanctioning 19 new unlawful settlements in the occupied West Bank, which expansionist Israelis claim in defiance of international law and human morality. It would be no gain for India, however, if robots take over from the more than 20,000 Indian workers sent to replace Palestinians since the Gaza war began.

The history of robots goes back to two American inventors, George Devol and Joseph Engelberger, who built the first programmable industrial robot, the Unimate, which General Motors -- who else? -- introduced to the world in 1961. With an edge on his colleague, Engelberger is often called the “Father of Robotics”. But the world’s first mass-produced humanoid robot is attributed to the genius of Alex Gu, an ethnic Chinese graduate of MIT as well as of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and formerly a sales executive at National Instruments in Zhangjiang Town. Described as a senior artificial intelligence engineer and a passionate robotics enthusiast, Gu is the founder and CEO of Fourier, the company that he named in 2015 after Joseph Fourier, an 18th-century French mathematician with many virtues who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt.

Musk’s broader AI ambitions are said to include the belief that Optimus could be Tesla’s biggest product, potentially exceeding the value of their vehicle business, even enabling a universal basic income. While Optimus is Tesla’s focus, Musk’s company xAI (which owns X/Twitter) develops advanced AI like Grok, aiming to understand the universe and compete in the AI landscape.

Initially, the company’s main object was physical rehabilitation although the advertised purpose seems to be to tackle labour shortages in ageing populations which is perfectly in harmony with the labour market’s requirements the world over. A canny goldsmith in Thanjavur, “Suresh Jew”, already advertises his skills for migrants rather like Filipinos did when they were under US colonial rule with the slogan: “Yankee go home but take me with you”.

China is a global leader in robotics, rapidly deploying industrial robots and making massive investments in humanoid AI, using government backing and a strong manufacturing base to dominate sectors from factory automation (welding, logistics) to service roles (hotel delivery, campus couriers) and aiming for mass-market humanoids with recent low-cost models. The Chinese lead in humanoid patents, visualise exponential growth, and integrate robots into daily life, transforming the economy amid demographic shifts. Robots are the future for visionaries like Gu. “There cannot be a language more universal and more simple (than mathematics)”, he writes, “more free from errors and obscurities … Mathematical analysis is as extensive as nature itself, and it defines all perceptible relations”.

India might even have to contend one day with a robotic Chinese Army on the snow-bound heights of Ladakh.