Humanoid robots are starting real jobs. How soon will they replace real staff?

Arnaud Robert, president of Hexagon Robotics, is more optimistic. He said the industry is now focused on how quickly humanoids can become “productive, versatile, and scalable.”

Read next: Amazon looking to replace over 600,000 US jobs with robots: report

Employees may be asked to train their replacements

Humanoid AI models learn from video of people doing physical tasks, and robot makers need far more of it than exists. NPR reported in October on workers in India filming tasks such as folding and packing aprons with head-mounted cameras, including one woman paid about $2.60 an hour. In the U.S., Figure started a marketplace called Index in August that pays people to film themselves doing chores and other jobs. Chief executive Brett Adcock said it had paid out $15 million so far.

Some factories are now fitting their own staff with cameras, and eWeek reported that some also use the footage to assess productivity. An employer asked by a vendor to record employees for a robot pilot should treat the request as workplace monitoring. New York, Connecticut and Delaware require advance notice of electronic monitoring, and Maine passed a law in January requiring notice before monitoring starts. Employers should also agree in writing who owns the footage, whether employees are paid for it and whether it can be used in performance reviews.

Safety standards are unfinished

A conventional industrial robot arm is bolted down and stops when the power is cut. A humanoid stays upright by constantly adjusting its balance, so a power failure can cause it to fall. ISO 25785-1, the first international safety standard for this kind of robot, is still being drafted, and the current U.S. industrial robot standard, ANSI/A3 R15.06-2025, doesn’t address it. Safety managers should be involved in any evaluation from the start.