Modern auto workers fear the impact of robots; Musk envisions a future without work.

Author: Peng Kunfang

More than 200 years ago, British textile workers picked up hammers and smashed machines. More than 200 years later, similar sentiments emerged again at a car factory in Korea.

In July this year, the Hyundai Motor Korea union launched a series of partial strikes. On the surface, this still appeared to be a familiar labor negotiation: wage increases, performance bonuses, and retirement age were all part of the union’s demands. But this year, a distinctly contemporary issue was added—job security in the age of AI and robotics. As early as the strike vote in June, the Hyundai Motor union proposed securing job protections against advanced robotic technologies. Korean media subsequently linked this demand to Hyundai Motor Group’s planned deployment of Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid robot. Ultimately, over 86% of the approximately 40,000 union members supported the strike.

Therefore, simplifying this event as "modern workers protesting robots taking their jobs" is inaccurate. The strikes that actually occurred in July were primarily triggered by the breakdown of labor negotiations over wages and other issues; robots were not the sole or even the most direct catalyst for this round of strikes. But another fact deserves equal attention: robots have already entered the union’s negotiation agenda—even before they are widely deployed on modern automotive assembly lines, they have prompted tens of thousands of industrial workers to begin contemplating a question that once seemed distant: What will become of people?

This scene easily evokes the Luddite movement in Britain during the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago. But what may be more worth discussing today is not whether humans are about to start smashing machines again, but a more subtle misalignment: robots may still be far from truly replacing large numbers of skilled industrial workers, yet the social conflicts surrounding robot replacement have already emerged.

Just as this anxiety emerges prematurely, Musk’s most recent interview offers a nearly opposite vision of the future. In a recent interview published by The Economist, Musk again discussed the long-term endpoint of AI and robotics: digital AI will take on an increasing share of cognitive labor, while robots will serve as the physical execution agents for AI. Continuing along this path, it’s possible that virtually all essential work could eventually be performed by machines.

Modern automotive workers fear that Atlas will take over some jobs on the production line, while Musk envisions a day when most work no longer requires human involvement.

The real divergence becomes clear here: the issue may not merely be whether robots will replace labor, but how humans understand "losing a job." Today’s society still rests on a solid chain: work generates income, and income supports consumption and livelihood; thus, losing a job naturally means losing economic security.

Elon Musk paints a different picture: as AI and robots push the production capacity of goods and services to a sufficient level, society enters a state of “extreme abundance,” where the cost of providing food, housing, transportation, healthcare, and numerous services continues to decline, and people no longer need to rely on selling their labor to obtain the necessities of life; work gradually transforms from a means of survival into a personal choice.

This is also the context behind his repeated advocacy in recent years for “Universal High Income.” AI and robots generate tremendous productivity, and the technological dividend ultimately translates into widespread prosperity; robots “taking jobs” may even become a prerequisite for humanity to escape the necessity of labor to survive.

Thus, Luddites see the risk of unemployment behind machines, while Musk sees the potential for freedom; modern auto workers hope to protect their jobs before robots enter factories, whereas Musk anticipates that robots will ultimately eliminate the very notion of “having to work.” These two seemingly opposite logics make the same question even more urgent: when machines generate increasing wealth, who ultimately shares in that wealth?

It’s not hard to understand the concerns of modern automobile workers. Hyundai Motor Group has publicly demonstrated an aggressively ambitious robotics strategy, and Boston Dynamics’ Atlas is steadily transitioning from laboratory demonstrations to industrial operations. In this industrial context, when a car worker sees Atlas lifting, walking, and handling components—while companies continuously emphasize AI, smart manufacturing, and automation—it’s natural to wonder: Will I still be the one standing beside the production line five years from now?

Social media has further compressed this anxiety into a highly shareable chain of logic: companies buy robots, robots enter factories, human workers lose their jobs. A single advancement in robotic capability, a procurement plan, or a short experimental video can quickly be woven into a narrative that “a certain profession is counting down to obsolescence.” Long-term technological trends are folded into the illusion of an imminent reality, causing the imagination of robot replacement to outpace the robots themselves.

The problem is that real industrial production is far from this simple. Automobile manufacturing has long been one of the most automated industries globally, with highly standardized processes such as welding, painting, stamping, and material handling having been covered by industrial robots for decades. What humanoid robots truly need to overcome today are precisely the aspects that traditional automation has never fully solved: flexible assembly, wiring manipulation, cross-station mobility, temporary anomaly handling, and the vast number of subtle and complex variations between different parts and operating conditions.

The most valuable aspect of a seasoned industrial worker goes far beyond having two arms. How to install a part when there’s a slight tolerance deviation, what it means when the feel changes during tightening, where to prioritize inspection when the machine emits a certain sound, and how to compensate for minor deviations from the previous process—these are the vast amounts of tacit knowledge formed over years of experience. They are rarely fully documented in SOPs, yet they determine whether a production line can truly run stably.

This is precisely the hardest part for current robots to overcome. Being able to pick up a part in a demo environment is a completely different engineering challenge from consistently performing the same action thousands of times over eight hours; successfully completing one assembly does not mean meeting the yield, cycle time, safety, and costly downtime risks required by real production lines. For many robotics companies, transitioning from “can do” to “reliably do over the long term” remains a long industrial journey.

So from today’s technological reality, the idea that “tens of thousands of auto workers will be immediately replaced by humanoid robots” is clearly an oversimplification. The more accurate situation today is that the long-term potential of technology has been prematurely realized in public discourse—people are already feeling uneasy about that future before robots truly gain the capability to fully replace human workers.

But this does not mean the concerns of Korean Hyundai workers are meaningless. On the contrary, when a technology has the potential to redefine production relations, social sentiment often precedes the widespread maturity of the technology. This premature anxiety may not accurately predict tomorrow, but it may already be raising a question that will eventually need to be seriously addressed.

Today, "Luddism" is often used as a slightly derogatory term. Those who reject new technologies are labeled Luddites; those who express concerns about AI or robots are easily categorized as conservative or anti-technology. Over time, Luddism has nearly become a synonym for "technological regression."

But the historical Luddite movement was far more complex than this label suggests. In the early 19th century, as the British textile industry rapidly mechanized, many participants in the Luddite movement were themselves skilled artisans who had spent years training. The machines brought not only higher production efficiency, but also disrupted established skill systems, wage structures, and labor relationships. Once-scarce crafts could rapidly lose value, low-skilled workers could enter production with the help of machines, skilled workers’ bargaining power declined, and some people’s livelihoods were directly threatened. Machines ultimately became the most tangible embodiment of their anger.

More than 200 years later, we naturally know that machines did not destroy human society. The Industrial Revolution ultimately created an economic scale far larger than that of the artisanal era and generated countless occupations that did not exist before. Therefore, it seems easy to judge the Luddites today: they overestimated the threat posed by machines and underestimated technology’s ability to create new opportunities.

But this kind of "hindsight correctness" overlooks a very important issue. Standing before a worker in 1811, he had no way of knowing how much the global economy would grow over the next 100 or even 200 years, or when new occupations would emerge. All he could feel was that his wages were falling and his skills were depreciating, with no idea where his next job would be. The overall benefits of technological progress typically take a long time to spread, but the costs of technological displacement can be concentrated in a very short time on specific groups of people.

Today, modern automotive workers find themselves in a similar position facing Atlas. Robotics companies tell them automation increases efficiency, economists say new technologies ultimately create new jobs, and tech companies paint a future where humans are freed from repetitive labor—these claims may all be true. But what workers truly care about is more concrete: When will my job disappear? How much will my 20 years of skills be worth in five years? Will any of the productivity gains companies achieve through robots become workers’ gains? If industrial transformation truly requires bearing costs, why should those costs fall first on those being replaced?

Therefore, interpreting the resurgence of Luddite sentiment in the age of robotics as merely a fear of new technology is an oversimplification and labeling. The textile workers two hundred years ago and today’s automotive workers are essentially asking the same question: after machines create greater efficiency, who ultimately benefits from that efficiency?

Elon Musk envisions a society where work becomes optional. According to his assessment, by around 2036, the productivity driven by AI and robotics may have advanced to the point where money itself is no longer as crucial as it is today, and people will no longer need to work to survive—labor will instead become a choice.

Such an outcome is certainly enticing, but it carries one critically important implicit condition: the immense productivity created by robots and the resulting abundance of material goods must ultimately be shared by the entire society.

Some people do not believe this view. As the renowned scholar Zhang Xiaoyu stated in "Technology and Civilization: Our Era and Future," "If slave labor benefited from technological progress, it was only because technological advancement and the resulting productivity gains turned past luxuries into today's mass consumer goods."

If machines are owned by a few corporations, computing power is concentrated among a few firms, and data and capital are likewise concentrated in the hands of a few, yet the goods and services produced by robots still rely entirely on the existing income distribution system, then increasing productivity will not automatically lead to greater wealth for everyone.

You see, during the last wave of the internet boom, the term “tech elite” already became a label for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

This is why Musk ultimately had to propose a universal basic income. In a sense, he appears to stand at the opposite extreme of Luddism, yet he still must answer the question posed by the Luddite movement two hundred years ago: How should the wealth created by machines be distributed?

What may be truly complex is not the distant endpoint depicted by Musk. If one day robots truly accomplish the majority of essential labor, society may already have developed new income systems, safety nets, and social contracts to match it. The most likely source of conflict, instead, is the intermediate stage today—the so-called “pain period” many envision on the path to that future.

Robots will not suddenly jump from replacing 0% of jobs to replacing 100% in a single day. More likely, they will first replace 5%, then 10%; highly standardized roles will shrink first, certain skills will begin to lose value, some people will directly benefit from the productivity gains enabled by AI and robots, while others will bear the initial costs of transition. The worst-case scenario is that businesses reap higher profits, but retraining systems for workers have not yet matured; new jobs are emerging, but not necessarily where those who lost their old positions are located.

Technical capabilities typically improve along a continuous curve, but social institutions do not automatically upgrade in sync with technology. This is why Michael Burry, the real-life investor who inspired The Big Short, responded to Musk’s views on AI, robotics, and universal high income with a striking statement: “Revolution will come first.”

This statement may seem overly pessimistic, and of course it can be debated—but at the very least, it accurately highlights the often-overlooked phase in Musk-style futurism: how do we navigate the decades between today’s society, where income is earned through labor, and a future where work becomes optional?

The anxiety of modern automobile workers is precisely at the forefront of this long transition path.

Therefore, the resurgence of Luddism in the age of robots need not be simply mocked. Destroying machines certainly cannot halt the industrial revolution—history has already shown that when a technology can consistently improve productivity and reduce costs, it is ultimately difficult to exclude it from society through resistance. The same holds true for humanoid robots today: as long as costs continue to fall, reliability keeps improving, and return on investment becomes viable, their integration into factories, warehouses, commercial services, and even household life will become a long-term industrial trend.

But acknowledging that trends are irreversible does not mean society must passively wait for technology to determine everything. Over the past two centuries, industrial civilization has never been defined solely by advances in engines, electricity, computers, and robots. The eight-hour workday, minimum wage, occupational safety, employment contracts, social insurance, product liability, and various industrial standards are equally part of the institutional legacy created by the Industrial Revolution. Many of these rules were initially seen as constraints on efficiency, yet ultimately became the foundation upon which technology could be widely integrated into society.

Today, the growing number of approaches, regulations, and industry standards surrounding artificial intelligence, robotics, data, security, and ethics is essentially the process of rediscovering boundaries in a new technological revolution. As robots truly enter production and daily life, these rules will become increasingly specific: What labor-management negotiations should precede robot deployment on production lines? How should the productivity gains from automation be distributed? Who bears the cost of retraining workers displaced by technology? How should liability be determined in the event of safety incidents caused by robots? Which high-risk scenarios must retain human oversight? These questions will ultimately become integral parts of robot industrialization.

They may not be as exciting as robots running, doing backflips, or performing complex tasks, but they could determine whether robots can truly cross the final threshold between technological demonstrations and industrial applications.

Wood guided by a string becomes straight; metal honed on a whetstone becomes sharp. The string may seem to constrain the direction of the wood, yet it enables it to ultimately become a pillar. The same holds true for technology. True, mature technological optimism does not pretend that technology creates no problems. The more a society believes that robots will ultimately generate tremendous productivity, the more it should proactively address issues of benefit distribution, employment transition, safety responsibility, and human dignity before productivity is truly unleashed on a large scale.

So the anxiety of South Korean Hyundai workers may indeed be a bit premature. Today’s humanoid robots still have a long engineering journey ahead before they can become truly reliable, long-term replacements for skilled automotive workers. But the discussion about how society should respond once robots truly enter factories is anything but premature.

It should have been even earlier.