Autonomous humanoid robots may soon be able to complete household chores like washing dishes and taking out the trash amid concerns from blue and white-collar workers that AI will disrupt industries across the United States.
On Friday, former Facebook senior executive Chamath Palihapitiya predicted that a robot capable of operating inside of American homes and completing simple errands will be developed in the next few years.
“I think it’s going to be in the next two or three years. You’ll have a domestic helper robot that you can probably pay a thousand bucks a month for,” he said during the “All-In” technology podcast.
“I think it washes the dishes. I think it will do the laundry. There’ll be like a whole set of household tasks that it will do,” he added.
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Palihapitiya also suggested that these robots will have more “narrow application ranges” and will not necessarily be humanoid in form.
He noted that companies like Gecko Robotics already have a slew of autonomous products with specific industrial purposes. For example, small robots can climb on the outside of buildings or bridges to look for cracks using special scanning equipment or even clean windows.
“I think that’s what we’re likely to see in domestic settings as well,” he said.
During his discussion with fellow entrepreneurs David Sacks, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg, Palihapitiya also addressed concerns regarding the potential for AI to disrupt various industries and jobs.
The White House released a report in late March that found roughly 10% of the U.S. workforce is in occupations with a high degree of exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) with lower performance requirements that could leave them more vulnerable to displacement.
According to the report, 20% of American workers are in occupations that have a high level of exposure to AI. About half of them — or 10% of the U.S. workforce — are not only highly exposed to AI but have relatively low performance requirements that could result in their displacement due to AI-powered automation.
“[Concerns about AI taking jobs] is kind of tipping into public consciousness and it’s also affecting white-collar jobs this time, not just people in fields picking berries,” Calacanis said. “So those people may be a little more vocal. And we’ve seen massive layoffs in tech. Massive layoffs in media. And those jobs don’t seem to be coming back. People seem to be taking the gains and just having people on the team be 30% more efficient.”
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Palihapitiya referenced a 1983 article from The New York Times regarding how computers could eliminate jobs that were offline knowledge work industries, such as creating engineering designs or architectural drawings.
He suggested that computers enhanced those jobs, increasing productivity and leading to the emergence of new sub-industries. Many of these industries, Palihapitiya noted, actually grew in some cases when people were fearful they would be outright replaced.
Palihapitiya said the concerns regarding the computer boom era are like those regarding AI today; the difference is that now people are concerned about it replacing knowledge work that has been aided by computers.
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“The reality is that these systems are actually going to give humans 10 to 100x leverage. So when you think about that, one person could spend three weeks making an architectural drawing today. What if that one person could make an architectural drawing every six hours? So, the question then is, do we start making architectural drawings, and we fire a bunch of architects? Or does the cost of making an architectural drawing drop by 90%?” he said.
Palihapitiya stressed that these systems will give people more “leverage” rather than “replacement.”
“I think the macro picture, if you look back hundreds of years, is that this is like many other moments in time,” he added.
FOX Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.