"Labor shortages are no longer a hiring issue. They are a 'growth issue' that determines whether a company survives. Every conversation with heavy industry CEOs ultimately comes back to this problem."
Michael Perry, head of commercial strategy at Persona AI, made this point during his keynote address at "Seoul Forum 2026," which opened Tuesday at the Shilla Hotel in Jung-gu, central Seoul, as he diagnosed the crisis of a "silver tsunami" (aging population) sweeping across the world's heavy industries.
Perry highlighted the severe labor shortage on the front lines of the chemical and manufacturing industries with figures. "The average age of production workers at Ulsan shipyards has reached 48.3, and in U.S. manufacturing alone, 2.1 million jobs are projected to remain unfilled by 2030," he said. "In a situation where companies must turn down orders due to a shortage of welding personnel, or lower factory utilization rates because they cannot secure shift workers, the annual revenue loss suffered by global manufacturing reaches 1 trillion dollars (about 1,500 trillion won)."
Adopting robots is an unavoidable choice to solve the labor shortage in manufacturing, the "pillar" of the global economy. However, existing "fixed automation robots" had clear limitations when introduced to industrial sites. Perry pointed out the limitations of conventional robots, which could only be deployed on site if they met four demanding conditions: mass production, standardized inputs, repetitive outputs, and stable processes. He explained that irregular and dangerous tasks at heavy industry sites, such as hull welding at shipyards or inspection of offshore platforms, had remained blind spots of automation—that is, a "value vacuum."
Perry stressed that humanoid robots are a means to solve this "value vacuum." He projected that humanoids will create value beyond human capability by working in zones too dangerous for humans to access and by providing consistent quality around the clock through the integration of sensing, action, recording, and verification. "Humanoids are not simply 'better robots' but a different category of capital that handles tasks fixed automation could never solve," he said. "The economics change not because labor becomes cheaper, but because capital (robots) is amortized across more tasks."
Perry is a global "commercialization specialist" who has converted robotics into commercial products that are deployed at actual industrial sites and generate profit. From 2014 to 2018, he worked as North America managing director at DJI, a world-leading drone technology company, and immediately afterward served as vice president of business development at Boston Dynamics. He later served as vice president of marketing at U.S. robotics startup Dexterity in 2021, before joining U.S. industrial humanoid startup Persona AI, where he currently leads the commercialization of robots specialized for heavy industry sites such as steel, shipbuilding, and energy.
Seoul Forum 2026 is being held on Tuesday and Wednesday by Seoul Economic Daily to mark its 66th anniversary. This year's event focuses on the industrial paradigm shift triggered by AI under the theme "New Core, New Industry." Korean scholars and overseas experts closely connected to Korean companies gather in one place to examine the competitiveness and direction of Korean industry from a global perspective and to seek ways to expand cooperation.
Following the opening ceremony and keynote address, special lectures by Lee Su-in, a professor at the University of Washington, and Park Sung-hyun, CEO of Rebellions, will continue Wednesday. The main session will discuss structural changes across industries in depth, centering on three major themes: robotics and manufacturing, bio and medical, and virtual simulation. Special events will also be held simultaneously, including the "Robotics Venture Forum," which discusses attracting investment and global expansion for domestic robot venture companies, and the "AI and Human Values Forum," which examines the ethics and social responsibility that AI development will bring, offering a multidimensional view of a balanced development path for technology and society.
