WASHINGTON: There have been warnings for decades that robots could replace people working in manufacturing and agriculture. More recently, concerns have grown that artificial intelligence could do the same with some white-collar jobs.

The use of robots has been growing, with 3.9 million of them "operational" in manufacturing around the world - 151 per 10,000 employees, double what it was 6 years ago - according to the International Federation of Robotics.

The number could keep rising if enough AI-powered "humanoid" robots are produced, according to investment bank Morgan Stanley, which speculated that "converging trends" could see large language model and ChatGPT-style generative AI installed in "people-shaped" robots.

"As the growth of the working-age population in advanced economies continues to decline, humanoids may prove to be a requirement for industries that are already facing difficulty attracting enough workers to remain productive," said Adam Jonas, head of global autos and shared mobility research at Morgan Stanley.

The investment bank estimates that the US could have over 60 million working humanoid robots by mid-century - a deployment that could "potentially" affect 75% of occupations and 40% of employees.

Such a transition could prove politically and socially divisive, however. "The commercialisation of humanoid robots will face many challenges, chiefly social and political acceptance given their significant potential to disrupt such a large swath of the global workforce," said Jonas, warning that up to 7 in 10 construction and farming jobs could be affected.

The US ranks tenth in terms of industrial robot use, according to the IFR, with 285 per 10,000 workers. South Korea is first, with around 1 robot for every 10 workers, with Singapore second and Germany third with over 400 robots for every 10,000 employees.

Proponents of robots say they could alleviate labour shortages in wealthy countries, which has facilitated migration from poorer regions, in part to try counter the economic impact of shrinking and ageing populations. "Immigration can offset demographic declines," according to Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley's chief economist.

Meanwhile, the recent rapid spread of increasingly sophisticated AI has led to warnings that it could prove not only a threat to jobs, with some of the industry’s leading figures last year warning of a "risk of extinction" posed by the bots.

Researchers at the University of Bath in Britain and the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany have sought to allay such worries, publishing a paper in mid-August in which they claimed that AI and LLMs "cannot learn independently or acquire new skills, meaning they pose no existential threat to humanity."

 - dpa