Close, but no cigar on EY's Fincantieri robots

If there is a sweet spot for advanced AI and robotics, it has to be robots doing jobs that wreck the human body, are repeated all day, and from time to time result in death.

And so it is that the AI Value Index team, which is me, greeted the arrival of a potential robotics case study from EY with great enthusiasm. How did it pan out?

Close, but no cigar.

A couple issues to consider as we interrogate the EY story. First, surprise, surprise, there is a shortage of skilled labor to perform hard, dull, and dangerous work. Second, the U.S. is pushing shipbuilders to ramp up production so it has more vessels to ferry weapons and ammo into combat zones.

The answer, of course, is robots. EY attempted to highlight the answer in action with a recent article about a program with NVIDIA and Fincantieri, the latter being an Italian player in the shipbuilding industry. They operate 18 shipyards worldwide and have over 23,000 employees, none of whom are robots but all of whom are future retirees.

The goal of the program is unclear and thus our hope for a case study perishes with EY's use of vague terms about how "humanoid robotics can play a meaningful role in addressing some of the most persistent challenges facing heavy industry."

But the article substantiates the robotics use case and shows how companies like Fincantieri are taking "tangible steps toward exploring how humanoids can support hazardous and repetitive tasks."

If this ends up meaning that Fincantieri has taken steps to reduce "human exposure to risk while maintaining productivity in complex operational environments" then we are likely to get more ships and maybe some of those unexposed humans can become sailors.