An analysis released Thursday by U.S. and European researchers suggests that by the 2080s, the number of humanoid robots could exceed 10 billion, surpassing the global human population. The paper, published on the news website RealClearScience by a team from the University of Milan, the University of Exeter, and Rockefeller University, assumes a sufficient power supply and robot-led production. However, the researchers emphasize that "numerical dominance should not be confused with social, political, or economic dominance." The United Nations predicts that the global human population will peak at approximately 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s, before gradually declining. The study indicates that if humanoid robots can participate in their own manufacturing and there is a sufficient supply of electricity and components, their numbers could exceed those of humans by around 2083. This scenario is one of over 4,000 possibilities considered by the research team; the prediction is based on market expectations that the number of humanoid robots will exceed 1 billion by 2050. The paper points out that if a production pipeline dominated by humanoid robots is lacking, and growth continues at the current rate, the number of humanoid robots will be approximately 4 billion by 2100, still far below the estimated total human population of about 10.2 billion at that time.
