. >> reporter: erik brynjolfsson is a professor at the massachusetts institute of technology and director of m.i.t.'s initiative on the digital economy. >> if you go to a place like china or vietnam, you see factories where there are thousands of people working side by side doing very routine work, very simple tasks. those are exactly the kinds of tasks that robots can do well. so, the ones that are being invented in south korea and around the world, those machines are getting cheaper and cheaper and more and more capable, and increasingly are going to replace the kind of human labor that has been powering the chinese industrial revival. >> reporter: this year in china, foxconn, a manufacturer that assembles apple iphones and other electronics, replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots. in the u.s., amazon bought the robotics company kiva for $775 million in 2012 and now has over 30,000 robots working in its fulfillment warehouses around the world. to sharpen south korea's competitive edge, the government and hyundai motor group are investing $76 million to build a smart factory complex