The excitement accumulating around generative AI and humanoid robots often tends to reduce the issue to technical capability. Claims such as “AI could eventually do these things; for now it is only being used for these tasks. The gap between the two will eventually close” do not represent an innocent or neutral perspective.

The transformation we are facing today is not simply about the emergence of more advanced technologies. At a deeper level, what is being reshaped is the social organization of production. For this reason, we must discuss who this technical capacity will serve and whose work it will transform as it unfolds.

At first glance, generative AI appears to be a productivity tool that writes text, summarizes documents, generates code, or creates images. On closer inspection, however, its core function is to convert cognitive labor into a standardized, measurable, and partially substitutable form. Humanoid robots are similarly not just machines that move like humans. They represent the next stage in the technical reorganization of labor within physical environments designed for the human body.

In other words, the Industrial Revolution transformed muscle power, and the Digital Revolution transformed attention and data. The emerging AI–robotics transformation now connects cognitive and embodied production more directly to capital’s logic of accumulation and profit.

In this context, describing the transformation merely as “automation” is no longer sufficient. We might instead call it virtual capital. Virtual capital does not simply mean accelerating production through machines. It also involves absorbing social knowledge, language, experience, decision patterns, and practical intuition into data, modeling them, and then reintroducing them to society as licensed infrastructures, platforms, subscription systems, and robotic services.

As a result, knowledge produced socially ceases to function as a public capacity and becomes an asset accessed through technical interfaces controlled by private ownership.

Consequently, boundaries between many sectors—from customer service to logistics, from reporting to maintenance work, and from healthcare support processes to retail and warehousing—are likely to blur. This does not mean that labor will disappear altogether. Rather, a portion of the workforce will move into roles supervising machine systems, intervening in corrective processes, and managing exceptional situations, while a larger share will be pushed toward more precarious, fragmented positions with weaker bargaining power in the labor market.

At the same time, if shaped through social pressure and political struggle, the very same technologies could also carry an emancipatory potential. They could be institutionalized in ways that support shorter working hours, stronger public digital infrastructures, broader social protection, and a more equitable distribution of productivity gains.

For this reason, the social consequences of the widespread adoption of generative AI and humanoid robots must move to the center of public debate. The key task is not simply to marvel at technological progress, but to understand the kind of social order technology is helping to construct—and to work toward directing that transformation toward a better future for everyone.