Samsung Electronics has announced plans to transform its domestic and overseas production facilities into "AI autonomous factories" by 2030, with phased deployment of humanoid robots. The ambitious vision calls for placing AI-powered humanoids across all production lines to drive manufacturing innovation. The company intends to deploy robots throughout entire processes—including assembly, material transport, and facility management—to build a collaborative ecosystem between humans and machines. Once physical AI data accumulates and robot safety and technological maturity are secured, Samsung plans to enter both enterprise and consumer markets.
Ahead of Samsung Electronics, Tesla has already embarked on its "humanoid transformation." After conducting training for its humanoid robot "Optimus" at its Fremont plant in the United States over the past year, Tesla will halt production of its Model S and Model X electric vehicles by June this year and convert the facility into an Optimus production base. With the arrival of the AI era, coexistence between humans and humanoids has become an irreversible trend. Not only advanced industries such as semiconductors and automobiles, but also traditional manufacturing sectors including steel, shipbuilding, petrochemicals, and machinery, as well as service industries, cannot guarantee survival if they fall behind in the humanoid transformation. Coexistence with humanoids is not a choice of "whether to accept" but a matter of survival that "must be accepted."
AI-driven restructuring at American and European companies carries significant implications for us. Last year, 216 U.S. companies—including Intel (22,000), Microsoft (15,000), and Amazon (14,000)—laid off 98,000 workers. Morgan Stanley has warned that European banks could cut 210,000 jobs, representing 10% of their total workforce, over the next five years. While AI-driven restructuring has not yet begun in earnest in Korea, government, companies, and labor unions could be swept up in a "restructuring tsunami" at any moment if they do not quickly devise measures for mutual prosperity.
Korea too must have companies and unions put their heads together to prepare for AI-driven employment shocks before it is too late. The Hyundai Motor union's approach of "not a single robot can be brought in" will only undermine corporate competitiveness and make employment conditions more precarious. This is not solely Hyundai Motor's problem. It is a stark reality facing all Korean companies. Now is the time for labor and management to sit at the negotiating table and seek solutions that can simultaneously ensure productivity improvement and employment stability.