An Israeli robotics company and a Japanese Honda Motor (HMC) affiliate are teaming up to roll out AI-controlled robots that companies can hire by the hour. And the robotics entrepreneur behind the endeavor says technology is advancing so rapidly, these devices can take over some complicated tasks from workers.

“The big leapfrog here is that our robots have some intelligence, which means they can actually do a job that is more versatile, and in a much closer way to a human,” Ran Poliakine, SixAI Founder & Chairman, told Yahoo Finance’s “The Ticker.”

MusashiAI is rolling out forklift & visual inspection robots in factories. (Courtesy: MusashiAI) More

The joint venture is called MusashiAI and the tech manufacturing companies are releasing forklift and visual-inspection robots that can work in factories by using self-taught machine learning. The model allows companies to hire robot labor by the hour or pay a salary based on tasks.

“I think following the very long R&D process, we've proven that our robots are as good, if not better, than human inspectors or human forklift drivers,” Poliakine said.

According to MusashiAI, its robots “are genuinely autonomous, opposed to automated – they are given tasks and define their own optimal way to perform them, just as humans do.”

Artificial intelligence in the U.S. is likely to impact millions of workers, according to recent research by The Brookings Institution. A Brookings study found roughly 25% of America's workforce “will face high exposure to automation in the coming decades” and could ultimately be displaced as a result. And according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report published last year, some half of all jobs worldwide — or up to 800 million total jobs — could be at risk of becoming obsolete by 2035 due to the rise of automation.

Poliakine contends there is no need for humans to do work that machines can handle. “We'll see more and more AI-based robotics as a service in the production line. And that will free up people to do what I think the world needs, which is more human touch in health care and education,” he said.

McKenzie Stratigopoulos is a producer at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @mckenziestrat

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