The Robot Economy: Here It Comes
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Noname manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) The Robot Economy: Here It Comes Miguel Arduengo · Luis Sentis Abstract Automation is not a new phenomenon, and ques- tions about its effects have long followed its advances. More than a half-century ago, US President Lyndon B. Johnson established a national commission to examine the impact of technology on the economy, declaring that automation “can be the ally of our prosperity if we will just look ahead”. In this paper, our premise is that we are at a technological in- flection point in which robots are developing the capacity to greatly increase their cognitive and physical capabilities, and thus raising questions on labor dynamics. With increas- ing levels of autonomy and human-robot interaction, intel- ligent robots could soon accomplish new human-like capa- bilities such as engaging into social activities. Therefore, an increase in automation and autonomy brings the question of robots directly participating in some economic activities as autonomous agents. In this paper, a technological frame- Fig. 1 Robots are rapidly developing capabilities that could one day work describing a robot economy is outlined and the chal- allow them to participate as autonomous agents in economic activities lenges it might represent in the current socio-economic sce- with the potential to change the current socio-economic scenario. Some nario are pondered. interesting examples of such activities could eventually involve engag- ing into agreements with human counterparts, the purchase of goods Keywords Intelligent robots · Robot economy · Cloud and services and the participation in highly unstructured production Robotics · IoRT · Blockchain processes. 1 Introduction need to perceive, adapt, interact, move around, and manipu- late objectsor a reasonable subset of these actionsin similar arXiv:1812.01755v4 [cs.RO] 9 Jun 2020 A robot, for our purposes, is a reprogrammable machine de- ways than humans do. signed to execute diverse physical tasks. Embodied robots Disembodied Artificial intelligent systems such as stock are every day acquiring more “human-like” capabilities such market exchanging bots take decisions and adapt to new as dexterous manipulation and mobility in unstructured and situations based on formal specifications provided by hu- dynamic environments. For robots to be intelligent they would mans. In a vastly more sophisticated world, AI systems will also need physical embodiment to directly experience the Miguel Arduengo Human Centered Robotics Lab (University of Texas at Austin) natural world and provide non-trivial behavior capabilities E-mail: [email protected] without direct human intervention [1]. Advances in artifi- Luis Sentis cial intelligence are enabling greater autonomy for robots Human Centered Robotics Lab (University of Texas at Austin) to make decisions in open worlds and unstructured envi- Department of Aerospace Engineering (University of Texas at Austin) ronments. With increasing levels of autonomy and human- E-mail: [email protected] robot interaction, intelligent robots could soon accomplish 2 Miguel Arduengo, Luis Sentis new human-like capabilities such as engaging in economic briefly discuss robot economy challenges, such as regulatory agreements involving the exchange and consumption of ser- policy, ethics or law. vices and goods with humans or other robot counterpart (Fig- ure 1). A robot economy (“robonomics” [2,3,4,5]) would be 2 The Robot Economy an economic system in which intelligent robots act as au- tonomous agents with the capacity to replicate some human A robot economy is a scenario in which intelligent robots behaviors in various key economic activities. The participa- would produce and provide many goods and services and tion of robots in the economy has, so far, only taken place ef- also participate as autonomous agents in the exchange mar- fectively for the production of goods. As a result, most of the kets [4]. In a robot economy, intelligent robots can perform published studies have focused on the impact of automation economic operations autonomously. For such activities to on economic growth, employment and income distribution happen, robots must have the opportunity to create and un- [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. As noted by [16], technolog- dertake digital contracts for their services or operations, so ical innovations can affect employment in two ways: that they can be fully integrated as autonomous agents into the human economy. – By directly displacing workers from tasks they were pre- The economy is usually defined as the set of services and viously trained for (displacement effect). means for satisfying human needs in our societies through – By increasing the demand for labor in new industries available resources. We consider that an essential issue for or jobs that arise or develop as a result of technological future economies will be to guarantee the satisfaction of all progress (productivity effect). basic human needs. Therefore, in the value chain of any eco- Therefore, to analyze the current impact of intelligent robotics, nomic activity the final outcome must try to achieve this the main question is which of the two effects, displacement essential principle. This might result, among other things, or productivity, could arise [12]. Broadly speaking, two nar- in that although robots will be able to act as autonomous ratives have emerged [9]: agents, they will not be able to obtain ownership over avail- able resources. Therefore, robots must always perform tasks – Technology pessimists, who consider that robonomics on a contractual basis in which they act as intermediaries would evolve towards an economy with great inequality in the realization of activities whose final result is to satisfy and class conflicts [2,8,10,14,17]. human basic needs. – Technology optimists, who point out that income growth Thus, in a safe and human-dependent robot economy we raises the demand for labor in sectors that produce non- are contemplating three basic rules [5]: automatable goods or services [6,7,16,18,19]. 1. A robot economy has to be developed within the frame- On the other hand, it should be considered that new tech- work of the digital economy. nologies depend on human and equipment capital, labor, and 2. The economy of robots must have internal capital that the role of institutions. And therefore, their impact is subject can support the market and reflect the value of the par- to various macroeconomic factors [20]. Thus, complex is- ticipation of robots in our society. sues, such as the proliferation of low income jobs and “zero- 3. There seems to be no justification for robots to have sum” economic activities [21], need to be contemplated. property rights and therefore they should operate only The debate between pessimists and optimists is unset- on the basis of contractual responsibilities. tled, although there seems to be a certain consensus in ac- cepting that a robot economy will inevitably have a redistri- During economic-financial transactions, robots can adopt bution effect that, to a large extent, will be positively regu- both the role of the agent that originates the transaction (sup- lated by our current institutions. plier, seller) and the role of the agent receiving the transac- The starting point for this paper is that we are effec- tion (buyer). On the supply side, some aspects of a robot tively in a technological inflection point in which intelligent economy are already developed, since industrial robots have robots are rapidly enabling the ability to perform cognitive been incorporated significantly in manufacturing in numer- and physical work, and perhaps become participants in a ous sectors. Robots improve productivity when used for tasks whole set of new economic activities. In the following sec- they perform more efficiently and with higher quality than tions: First, we develop a brief description of the essential humans. It is expected that advances in artificial intelligence characteristics of a robot economy (section 2). Second, we and machine learning will increase further the number of analyze a framework for which a robot economy could arise tasks that can be automated [6]. (section 3). Third, we consider the foreseeable impact of the On the demand side, a robot economy has not achieved robot economy in the current socio-economic environment any significant degree of development yet. However, future (section 4). Fourth, these impacts are analyzed by means of robots are expected to be able to purchase products and ser- a simple robotic model (section 5). Finally, in section 6, we vices on behalf of their owners. This means that they will The Robot Economy: Here It Comes 3 affect consumer behavior [22]. In addition, robots partici- provides cloud support to build robotic applications in a de- pating as autonomous agents in the exchange of goods and centralized network [30]. Alternative approaches like MRPT services with humans or other robots, could be considered [31], CARMEN [32], Player [33], Microsoft RDS [34], and buyers themselves. Thus, from a demand perspective, the others, provide some of the ROS features, but the lack of boundaries between robots and humans as consumers could support for extending across devices imposes major limita- be somewhat blurred [22,23]. tions to their development. In summary, recent research advancements in robotics The operating basis of our autonomous agent economy and AI algorithms point to the development of some aspects would be embodied in a ROS “behavioral algorithm” which of a robot economy with more advances to come soon. would enable the interaction of robots with their environ- ment. ROS is composed of many nodes, each providing spe- cific functionality. These nodes communicate with each other 3 Technological framework for the robot economy by messages, which are themselves data structures. Mes- sages can be passed among nodes by asynchronous (topics) For intelligent robots to participate in a robot economy, we or synchronous (services) mechanisms. Topics are a publish- highlight several technology requirements: subscribe method of inter-node communication.