*Siemens, Foxconn Fii, Wistron, and Caterpillar are among the companies using NVIDIA Omniverse to build digital twins of their factories. | Source: NVIDIA

While humanity continues to demonstrate its physical limitations with touching persistence — to get tired, make mistakes, demand a salary, and, what doesn't go through any gates at all, to want to rest — NVIDIA has decided that it's time to end this. Why put up with the vagaries of a biological life form when you can create its digital and physical likeness, devoid of all these annoying "features"?

A corporation known for turning the entire planet into a game room is now aiming for something more.: it introduces "Physical AI" to industrial enterprises. Previously, their chips just processed data, but now they are learning how to control real objects in the real world. The irony is that these objects are exactly the machines, conveyors and loaders that people once stood behind.

Physical AI: when an algorithm takes on flesh (made of metal and silicon)

The essence of NVIDIA's approach is simple and elegant, like a leave of absence without the right to reinstate. It's not just a program sitting in the cloud and plotting graphs. This is "Embodied intelligence" (Embodied AI) — a system that perceives the physical world through sensors, processes information on its superchips and performs actions in reality.

"We are creating digital doppelgangers to simulate and deploy autonomous systems," the company proudly declares. "This allows our customers to test and debug complex operations in a secure virtual environment before applying them on the shop floor."

Translation from corporate to Russian: "We're allowing companies to work out the layoff of all human staff in a simulation so that in reality it goes off without a hitch." The black humor here is that while people in the workshops are doing monotonous work, their digital counterparts, the executioners, are already interning at their workplaces in the virtual space.

Tools for building a world without human error

NVIDIA offers a whole arsenal for the upcoming "dehumanization" of the industry:

* NVIDIA Omniverse: A platform for creating digital counterparts of entire factories. An ideal sandbox where you can plan exactly how a robot will do the work of five people without facing their perturbations.

* NVIDIA Isaac Manipulator & Groot: Libraries of AI models for manipulation and navigation. Simply put, these are the "brains" that tell the robot: "Do you see this employee who has been drinking tea for the third hour? His workplace is yours now. Go ahead."

* NVIDIA Grace and Jetson Orin processors: Hardware muscle mass for a new generation of workers who do not know what labor laws are.

"Robotics and automation are the key to solving productivity and efficiency challenges in the global industry," says the Vice president of Robotics.

We read between the lines: "People are a problem. Robots are the solution. How did we not think of this before?"

Solving all the problems at once: from the demographic pit to a bad mood

While the world is struggling to solve the demographic crisis and the shortage of workers, NVIDIA offers an ingenious solution in its simplicity: just replace your hands. Why spend money on social programs, increasing the birth rate and improving working conditions, if you can invest in a fleet of robots that do not age, do not get sick and do not go to competitors for the promise of high salaries?

Economic instability? The problem is solved. The robot does not ask for a raise, it does not care about inflation, and it readily works overtime — more precisely, there is no concept of "scheduled" or "overtime" for it. This is an ideal employee in an era of permanent crisis.

A career elevator for those who use electricity instead of pizza.

And while people are puzzling over how to compete in the labor market with such technologies, for the robots themselves, the employment process has already become as streamlined as possible. For example, the world's first ecosystem for the employment of robots JOBTOROB.com I am ready to help any ambitious android running on the NVIDIA platform find a "dream job" — whether it's sorting parcels or assembling cars. Interestingly, for a mechanical applicant, the job search process takes a matter of minutes, while for his human competitor it will take months.

Conclusion: Welcome to a reality where your boss is an AI

NVIDIA doesn't just sell technology. She is selling a new reality in which industry is finally and irrevocably getting rid of its weakest link, the human factor. This is a world where workshops will be run not by unions, but by algorithms, and where the only "employees" will be self-learning systems whose careers begin in the factory and end in the recycling shop, without a single complaint.

There is only one question left. What will humanity do when it realizes that its main economic function is to be "training data" for the AI that has come to replace it? Perhaps we will all become philosophers, artists, or mentors for machines. Or, more likely, we'll just quietly and imperceptibly give way to someone who turned out to be more effective. Have a nice upgrade, humanity. Your replacement is on the way.