Meet the Chinese Startup Using AI—and a Small Army of Workers

AgiBot, a humanoid robotics company based in Shanghai, has engineered a way for two-armed robots to learn manufacturing tasks through human training and real-world practice on a factory production line.

The company says its system, which combines teleoperation and reinforcement learning, is being tested on a production line belonging to Longcheer Technology, a Chinese company that manufactures smartphones, VR headsets, and other electronic gadgets.

AgiBot’s project shows how more advanced AI is starting to change the abilities of industrial machines—an innovation that may creep into new areas of manufacturing in China and elsewhere. The trend may increase manufacturing productivity and could allow products to be made with fewer low-wage human workers. This might lead to some jobs disapp