Robots – Impact Lab

future predictions, future report, future scenario, future tech

The Megaproject Explosion: Why AI and Robotics Will Enable Humanity’s Grandest Ambitions

November 7, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Something remarkable is happening to human ambition. For the first time in history, we’re approaching a moment where the limiting factor on what we can accomplish isn’t capability—it’s imagination.

Over the coming years, AI and robotics, along with other exponential technologies, will enable a single person to accomplish more during their lifetime than entire civilizations could achieve a century ago. And as individual capability explodes, our collective sights are shifting toward megaprojects—huge, massive, grandiose undertakings that would have seemed impossible just years ago.

The numbers tell the story. In my original analysis, I predicted megaprojects would reach 24% of global GDP within a decade. That was before generative AI, before humanoid robots reached commercial viability, before we fully understood how rapidly these technologies would compound. Now? That estimate looks conservative.

Automation, Business, Robotics

Reverence for robots: Japanese workers treasure automation

August 24, 2017

MORIYA, Japan (AP) — Thousands upon thousands of cans are filled with beer, capped and washed, wrapped into six-packs, and boxed at dizzying speeds — 1,500 a minute, to be exact — on humming conveyor belts that zip and wind in a sprawling factory near Tokyo.

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Engineering, Healthcare, Inventions, Robotics, Science & Technology News

Toyota’s new robot leg brace can help those with partial paralysis walk again

May 2, 2017

Toyota is introducing a new robotic leg brace called the Welwalk WW-1000 that can help patients with partial paralysis affecting one side of their body walk again. The robotic exoframe is worn on the affected leg, with a large motor component at the knee joint that provides just enough assistance to the patient, letting them recover their own walking ability therapeutically over time.
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Automation, Economy, Engineering, Legalized marijuana, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Technological Unemployment

Marijuana ‘trimmigrants’ have the hardest job in the industry ― and they could soon be upstaged by robots

April 19, 2017

Every summer, tens of thousands of migrant workers swarm a remote area of Northern California — the marijuana-growing capital of the US — to find work as “trimmers” after the weed has been harvested.

Their job is to prune the fluffy, green buds with small pairs of scissors to clear them of leaves before they wind up on dispensary shelves or in dealers’ pockets.

The work is arduous and pays between $100 and $300 a day for 10 to 15 hours of labor on the black market, which generated 87% of pot sales in North America in 2016.

Continue reading… “Marijuana ‘trimmigrants’ have the hardest job in the industry ― and they could soon be upstaged by robots”

Architecture, Artificial Intelligence, Engineering, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

This bricklaying bot could be the architect of the future

April 17, 2017

If you want curves like this, you’ll need a robot. Designed by architects Archi-Union, the undulating exterior of the Chi She Gallery in Shanghai was made using an adapted car-manufacturing robot. “We used digital tools to transform geometry data to digital-fabrication data,” says Li Han, chief architectural designer at Archi-Union, who spent five years making the cyborg helper.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Economy, Employment, Hot Issues, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Robots won’t just take our jobs – they’ll make the rich even richer

March 15, 2017

Should robots pay taxes?

It may sound strange, but a number of prominent people have been asking this question lately. As fears about the impact of automation grow, calls for a “robot tax” are gaining momentum. Earlier this month, the European parliament considered one for the EU. Benoît Hamon, the French Socialist party presidential candidate who is often described as his country’s Bernie Sanders, has put a robot tax in his platform. Even Bill Gates recently endorsed the idea.

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Business, Drone, drones, Future, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Robots and drones: Coming soon to a construction site near you

March 13, 2017

Advancements in the robotics field are helping to transform a number of industries, construction being one of them. Companies that build things can expect to see a host of new machines that perform a variety of tasks — adding efficiency to construction projects as well as reducing injuries to human workers.

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Biotech, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Science Fiction

Get ready for robots made with human flesh

March 13, 2017

Two University of Oxford biomedical researchers are calling for robots to be built with real human tissue, and they say the technology is there if we only choose to develop it. Writing in Science Robotics, Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy and Andrew Carr argue that humanoid robots could be the exact tool we need to create muscle and tendon grafts that actually work.

Right now, tissue engineering relies on bioreactors to grow sheets of cells. These machines often look like large fish tanks, filled with a rich soup of nutrients and chemicals that cells need to grow on a specialized trellis. The problem, explain Mouthuy and Carr, is that bioreactors currently “fail to mimic the real mechanical environment for cells.” In other words, human cells in muscles and tendons grow while being stretched and moved around on our skeletons. Without experiencing these natural stresses, the tissue grafts produced by researchers often have a broad range of structural problems and low cell counts.

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AI, Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robots, Science & Technology News

Wikipedia bots act more like humans than expected

March 10, 2017

‘Benevolent bots’ or software robots designed to improve articles on Wikipedia sometimes have online ‘fights’ over content that can continue for years, say scientists who warn that artificial intelligence systems may behave more like humans than expected.

Editing bots on Wikipedia undo vandalism, enforce bans, check spelling, create links and import content automatically, whereas other bots (which are non-editing) can mine data, identify data or identify copyright infringements.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Coding, Machine Learning, Programming, Science & Technology News, Software Development

AI learns to write its own code by stealing from other programs

March 10, 2017

OUT of the way, human, I’ve got this covered. A machine learning system has gained the ability to write its own code.

Created by researchers at Microsoft and the University of Cambridge, the system, called DeepCoder, solved basic challenges of the kind set by programming competitions. This kind of approach could make it much easier for people to build simple programs without knowing how to write code.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Hot Issues, Human Behavior, Intelligence, Legal Issues, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Do Robots and AI Deserve Rights?

March 9, 2017

When it comes to robot-human relations, the conversation typically centers on the welfare of the sentient. Science fiction paints us as petrified by our own creations; fears of a bot planet have influenced everything from Asimov’s “Laws of Robotics” to HAL 9000’s homicidal impulses to Skynet’s global genocide.

These human-centric anxieties are understandable. However, as our assorted bots and bits gain skills and personalities, should they be afforded some form of protection from us? It’s a question people are starting to seriously ponder.

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Clothing, Economy, Employment, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Textiles

Sewbo is getting closer to disrupting the sweatshop

March 6, 2017

Jon Zornow, the founder of Sewbo, made waves in September after announcing that he had built the first robot to sew a t-shirt without human intervention. Using a robot arm and an automatic sewing machine, Zornow took some carefully prepared material and ran it through a pre-programmed series of moves.

It worked. Out popped a t-shirt.

Continue reading… “Sewbo is getting closer to disrupting the sweatshop”