AI robots may outnumber workers in a few decades, ex-Citi executive says

AI robots will exceed the working population within a few decades as more firms adopt AI agents and continue to squeeze costs, a former Citi executive warned on Monday. Rob Garlick, Citi Global Insights’ former head of innovation, technology, and future of work, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that as leaders continue to prioritize profitability, their human workers will be left in the dust. “We have a leadership system in the economic terms and business terms that celebrates profitability,” Garlick said in a conversation with CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick and Ben Boulos. “When you marry profitability up with the technology progress, we have the biggest trade in history coming, which is basically that artificial intelligence will be able to do more and more, better and better, cheaper and cheaper, and that will be able to substitute for people.” Garlick, who recently authored “AI – Anarchy or Abundance? Why the Future of Work Needs Pro-Human Leaders,” explained that his previous research at Citi showed that the number of AI robots is going to skyrocket as a result of these business decisions. “We’re going to go over the next couple of decades to more moving robots than the working population, and then you add on agents, little agents, and it is going to explode,” he added. AI robots ranging from humanoids to domestic cleaning robots and autonomous vehicles are forecasted to increase to 1.3 billion by 2035, according to a 2024 Citi report led by Garlick. The number of AI robots would quickly increase to over 4 billion by 2050, per the insights. The Citi report even measured how long it would take for a robot to pay for itself through the money saved by replacing a human worker, for example, a $15,000 robot would break even in 3.8 weeks for a $41 an hour human job, or 21.6 weeks for a $7.25 human job. Meanwhile, a robot that costs $35,000 would have a payback time of 8.9 weeks for a $41 an hour human job. “You can already buy a humanoid today, which gives you a payback period versus human workers of less than 10 weeks,” Garlick told CNBC, citing a figure from his book. “Humans can’t compete on this basis.” The rise of AI agents Microsoft’s Work Trend Index report showed that 80% of leaders expect AI agents to be largely integrated into their AI strategy within the next 12 to 18 months. AI agents are a type of software program that can make decisions and complete tasks without much human direction. Meanwhile, McKinsey & Company’s global managing partner, Bob Sternfels, noted that the company currently employs 20,000 agents alongside 40,000 humans, in an interview with Harvard Business Review . A year prior, the company only had 3,000 agents, and Sternfels predicts that in 18 months from now, there will be an equal number of employees and agents. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also shared similar views at the World Economic Forum’s flagship conference in Davos last month, saying that AI will likely surpass human intelligence by the end of this year. “My prediction is, in the benign scenario of the future, that we will actually make so many robots in AI that they will actually saturate all human… there will be such an abundance of goods and services because my prediction is that there’ll be more robots than people,” Musk said. Fears around AI replacing workers have mounted in the past year as major firms, including Amazon , Salesforce , Accenture , Heineken , and Lufthansa , have cited the technology as part of the reason for eliminating thousands of roles. Kristalina Georgieva, managing director at the International Monetary Fund, told CNBC in January that AI is “hitting the labor market like a tsunami” and warned that “most countries and most businesses are not prepared for it.” In the U.S., AI played a role in almost 55,000 layoffs in the U.S. in 2025, according to December data from consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. However, some leaders are striking a more positive tone. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang predicts that the “AI boom” will create six-figure salaries for the workers building AI and chip factories. Huang said the technology will boost skilled trade work, such as for plumbers, electricians, construction, and steel workers.