Artem Sokolov on Why Robots Will Strengthen Work, Not Replace It
The future of work is not defined by scarcity of jobs, but by a growing shortage of people to perform them. According to entrepreneur Artem Sokolov, Founder and CEO of Humanoid, the real challenge facing modern economies is how societies will sustain productivity as labor gaps continue to widen. He is confident that automation is not a threat — it is an essential mechanism for keeping critical systems functioning.
Artem Sokolov on the Persistent Myth of Job-Stealing Technology
Artem Sokolov emphasizes that сoncerns about robotics eliminating human employment are hardly new. Similar anxieties surfaced during the early 19th century with the introduction of power looms. Since then, every major technological breakthrough — from electrification to industrial machinery to the digital revolution — has triggered predictions of widespread unemployment and social disruption. Yet history consistently tells a different story.
One of the clearest examples is the transformation of agricultural labor. In the early 1800s, roughly 70% of Americans worked in farming. As mechanization advanced through tractors, harvesters, and automated irrigation systems, that share fell dramatically, reaching only about 2% by the year 2000. Despite this massive workforce shift — far larger than any modern layoffs — the economy did not collapse into chronic unemployment. Instead, entirely new professions emerged, including roles tied to agricultural analytics, sustainability consulting, and automation management.
This pattern has repeated across every industrial transition. Although each technological wave has sparked claims that this time wouldn’t be the same, long-term data shows that unemployment rates in developed economies remain relatively stable, fluctuating with business cycles rather than structural automation shocks.
In the United States, Sokolov Artem gives the example, average unemployment over the last half century hovered around 5.8% despite decades of mechanization and digitalization. The key question today is whether artificial intelligence and robotics represent a true departure from this historical trend.
A Global Transformation of the Workforce
What distinguishes the current moment is not simply technological capability, but scale. Artem Sokolov explains that automation is rapidly becoming foundational infrastructure across industries, including manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and even legal services.
Estimates suggest that tens of millions of jobs worldwide may be displaced by technology in the coming years. However, projections also indicate that an even larger number of new roles will be created, particularly in fields requiring human judgment, creativity, and emotional intelligence.
At the same time, there’s a demographic paradox. While the volume of work continues to expand, the global labor supply is shrinking. In the United States alone, employers faced a shortfall of roughly one and a half million workers in mid-2024, and Europe is experiencing similar shortages, especially in logistics and healthcare. These challenges are expected to intensify as populations age: by 2050, approximately one in six people worldwide will be over the age of 65, compared to one in eleven in 2019.
Artem Sokolov on Humanoid Robotics as a Practical Solution to Labor Shortages
Artem Sokolov believes humanoid robotics — designed to operate in spaces built for humans and to perform tasks using human-like movement and interaction — are emerging as a particularly effective response to mounting workforce shortages. As he explains, their greatest advantage lies in compatibility. They can integrate into existing environments and workflows without requiring costly infrastructure redesign.
Unlike human workers, humanoid systems do not face physical fatigue, scheduling constraints, or absenteeism. They can maintain consistent performance over extended periods, whether restocking retail shelves overnight or conducting repetitive quality inspections on production lines for weeks at a time. Beyond endurance, their deployment can also lead to measurable operational benefits, including lower error rates, fewer workplace injuries, and reduced long-term labor costs.
Yet the impact of robotics, Sokolov Artem notes, extends beyond simply performing the same work more efficiently. At a deeper level, automation is reshaping the very definition of what constitutes human labor.
Shifting the Focus From Tasks to Purpose
Many of the roles currently being automated share common characteristics: they are physically demanding, monotonous, or hazardous. From order fulfillment in high-intensity warehouse environments to inspections in dangerous industrial settings and routine support tasks in hospitals, these jobs are essential but often undesirable. In many cases, Artem Sokolov remarks, robots are assuming responsibilities that humans have historically found exhausting, unsafe, or difficult to staff at scale.
When repetitive and low-value tasks are delegated to machines, people gain greater capacity to concentrate on higher-level activities driven by creativity, judgment, and purpose. Each major wave of automation has given rise to entirely new industries. Fields such as web design, mobile app development, renewable energy, and biotechnology were virtually nonexistent just decades ago.
Automation has also historically reshaped the structure of time itself. Across successive industrial revolutions, average working hours have steadily declined as productivity increased. This trend has often translated into measurable improvements in well-being and output. For example, experiments with shorter workdays in Sweden demonstrated gains in both employee satisfaction and performance.
Equally important, increased leisure time has repeatedly correlated with periods of intense cultural and intellectual advancement. The Renaissance, for instance, was fueled in part by labor-saving innovations such as the printing press, which expanded access to knowledge while freeing human effort for artistic, scientific, and philosophical pursuits. Today’s automation wave may be laying the groundwork for a similarly transformative expansion of human creativity.
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Broader Social Impacts of Automation
The effects of large-scale automation extend far beyond productivity metrics. As physically demanding and high-risk tasks increasingly shift to machines, people gain greater freedom to invest time in areas that deliver deeper personal and societal value, including education, entrepreneurship, creative pursuits, and family life.
According to Artem Sokolov, this transition will not be without challenges. Certain roles will inevitably disappear, and some skill sets will lose relevance. As a result, lifelong learning will become essential components of modern career paths. Education systems, in turn, will need to evolve toward greater flexibility, accessibility, and responsiveness to technological change.
Despite these adjustments, historical perspective offers strong grounds for optimism. The vast majority of professions that exist today would have been unimaginable to workers in the nineteenth century. Looking ahead, the careers that today’s children may pursue in the next fifty years are likely to be equally difficult to predict, but also rich with opportunity.
A Collaborative Future Between Humans and Machines
Artem Sokolov is assured that framing automation as a competition between humans and robots is fundamentally misleading. What is emerging instead is a complementary relationship. Human strengths, such as complex decision-making, empathy, creativity, and the ability to define purpose, differ profoundly from the capabilities that machines provide. Robots excel at precision, endurance, consistency, and high-volume execution.
As stated by Artem Sokolov, allowing humanoid robotics and AI to assume the tasks they perform most effectively enables people to dedicate more time to work that requires imagination, judgment, and uniquely human perspective. Rather than signaling a threat, this shift represents a compelling reason to embrace automation as a partner in shaping a more productive and meaningful future of work.
