A few weeks ago I had lunch with a technology executive who leads operations in the region, and we talked about the imminent arrival of robotics in Latin America.
The scale of the phenomenon is global: in 2025, more than 600,000 industrial robots were installed worldwide, an 11% increase over the previous year, and the global stock reached 5 million operating units. Asia accounts for a good share of this adoption, while the Americas still represent a smaller proportion. This marriage of artificial intelligence and robotics raises an unavoidable question about change management and cultural transformation: What will happen in organizations when it's our turn to have a robot as a coworker?
This concern goes beyond the corporate and industrial sphere and settles into everyday life. In Buenos Aires, in a standard shopping mall like Abasto, you can find a café run by a robot. People walk up, enter their order on a screen, and film the robotic arm as it prepares and serves the coffee. Yet behind the amazement and the technological novelty, the scene also produces an ambivalent feeling. It's the direct perception that where there used to be a human being interacting with others, there is now an automated transaction, which leads us to question the social and labor consequences of this process.
The impact of automation decisions is already visible in different settings. In cities like Bogotá, after significant increases in labor costs that affected the sustainability of many small businesses, the automation of access and services in residential buildings accelerated. Traditional front desks were replaced with double-door airlock systems with cameras for receiving packages. While this kind of measure solves an operational or economic problem and becomes permanent, it also has a profound impact on employment, alters the dynamics of coexistence, and poses new security challenges for the community.
The invisible challenge: redefining human skills in the face of automation
Faced with this landscape, positions tend to split between technological enthusiasm and fear of job loss, echoing historical debates like those of the Luddite movement during the Industrial Revolution.
The scale of this transformation is already measurable: the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that AI could affect up to 40% of jobs worldwide, offering productivity gains but also raising concern about automation and job losses. The ILO warns that one in four workers holds an occupation exposed to generative AI, though its conclusion is key: most jobs will be transformed, not eliminated, because they will continue to require judgment, oversight, and human interaction within the team.
According to the World Economic Forum, by 2030 the creation of 170 million jobs and the disappearance of 92 million is expected, a net positive balance of 78 million new positions. The shift will reach 22% of current jobs: the transformation will be structural.
This automation forces organizations to rethink which human leadership skills to train their teams in. Although technological competencies will grow fastest, analytical and creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, leadership, and collaboration will remain critical. In addition, the skills gap is today the main business barrier: 63% of employers identify it as their central obstacle. The discussion isn't whether human capabilities will be replaced, but how they will be combined with technology while avoiding delegating our own thinking to AI.
From the perspective of organizational transformation, technology never fails in isolation; it fails when the culture isn't ready to support it. Change management isn't simply about communicating a new tool, but about deeply understanding the anxieties and behaviors that are set in motion when the environment changes.
Regardless of whether a company is considering robotics in the short term, leadership demands opening this conversation. Companies are the main generators of social, environmental, and economic wealth, and the responsibility falls on them to understand what kind of society they are building. In a hyperconnected, though often depersonalized, corporate world, true evolution lives in what people do, think, and feel day to day. The goal shouldn't be to compete to be the best in the world, but to take on the collective responsibility of being the best for the world, ensuring that technological progress doesn't leave the human being behind.
By Luis Felipe Barrientos, partner at Olivia Colombia.