Trump Wants Tariffs to Bring Back U.S. Jobs. They Might Speed Up AI Automation Instead

For years, a major limitation of robots was that they couldn't adapt to even minor changes in their environments. An industrial robot might be able to carry out a repeatable task in a controlled environment easily--like cutting a car door from a sheet of metal--but for more deft tasks in more complex environments, humans still prevailed. That might not be the case for much longer. Robot "brains" are getting more adaptable, thanks to progress in general AI systems like large language models. Robot bodies are becoming more deft, thanks to investment and research by companies like Boston Dynamics.