Meet your next best employee: Tireless, salary-free, and not even human

Picture this: a new hire who never sleeps, doesn’t take coffee breaks, skips vacation days, and demands exactly zero benefits. 

Sound like a dream? No. This is reality. 

When will robots replace humans? One estimate suggests it could happen in 10 years.

How do we prep for that day?

Today, AI “agents” are on their way to replacing up to 70% of office and repetitive work, according to consulting firm McKinsey.

Goldman Sachs made an even bolder prediction: it says AI and robotics will add a staggering $7 trillion to the global economy. 

How? Let's break it down:

Welcome to the era of AI agents. Two years ago, we had chatbots. 

Now, we're watching the dawn of true digital agents.

Unlike chatbots that simply reply and reasoners that analyse, agents act. They DO things.

They operate like ultra-competent digital coworkers: researching, scheduling, filing reports, even making decisions. 

All without asking for a raise.

Let's break it down. OpenAI has sketched out this digital agents evolution in stages:

#1. Chatbots (Level 1): Like the early days of ChatGPT—text in, text out.

#2. Reasoners (Level 2): Where we are now with models like Claude and GPT-4 — that's AI that can analyse and think.

#3. Agents (Level 3): This year’s (2025) frontier — AI that can actually do things.

#4. Innovators (Level 4): Coming soon — AI that can invent and create new ideas.

#5. Organisations (Level 5): Future AI that might run entire companies.

These AI agents can:

And while they do that, humans get to focus on what we do best:

The potential is staggering.

As OpenAI’s Sam Altman put it, “The day is approaching when we can ask an AI model to solve all of physics and it can actually do that.”

Google is leading the charge with its Gemini-powered Project Mariner. 

CEO Sundar Pichai recently revealed that it can understand and reason across your entire browser screen — text, images, code, forms — and then act on what it sees. 

In early benchmarks, it nailed over 83% of tasks autonomously. Think digital assistant meets superhuman intern.

So, when do we get these "highly efficient, near-perfect" agents?

It's not like you're gonna lose your job to a robot tomorrow.

2025–2030: 

Expect agents to dominate digital tasks. They’ll summarise research, manage schedules, write reports, and even generate ideas. Robots? Still mostly grounded by hardware limitations.

2030–2040:

Agents will start making multi-step decisions and handle real-world systems like healthcare, law, and education — though human oversight will still be needed.

Post-2040: We may finally meet near-perfect agents. With enough breakthroughs, they’ll handle virtually all domains. Some may simulate full general intelligence, others may operate like collectives of specialised agents.

All AI follows an evolution of capability:

#1. Narrow AI (today): Great at single tasks. Think ChatGPT, Midjourney, Tesla Autopilot.

#2. General AI (coming): Can learn anything a human can –  across a wide range of tasks, can learn, reason, plan, and adapt with minimal human input. Could transfer knowledge from one domain to another like a human can. We’re not there yet.

#3. Superintelligence (future): Far beyond human cognition. Think AI that invents physics, not just learns it. We’re still far from this. This is considered speculative. It also raises deep ethical and existential questions. Superintelligence would require not only generality but also self-awareness, goal-setting, and control of complex real-world systems.

The $7 trillion value added to the global economy estimated by Goldman Sachs is an ballpark figure, based on certain assumptions.

For example, by automating of routine or dangerous tasks (i.e. connecting high-power electric cables), it enable workers to shift to higher-value activities.

Goldman Sachs figures that AI could automate parts of two-thirds of US jobs, potentially replacing 25% to 50% of the workload in those exposed roles.

This automation frees up human potential to focus on higher-order tasks — fostering efficiency and innovation.

By definition, AI agents aren’t just software. They’re a new workforce.

As generative AI technologies become more embedded in sectors ranging from software to healthcare and finance, they boost both business efficiency and economic output at scale — creating large macroeconomic dividends.

It's not far fetched for this to happen soon, when everyone from interns to CEOs may have their own AI team.

Job losses are a part of life as society evolves alongside technology.

Drivers replaced coachmen. The car era created a multi-trillion industry and a host of new jobs.

With 78 million automobiles sold worldwide in 2024, that's equivalent to $1+ trillion — value created in just one year.

Historically, as with past tech waves, job displacement tends to be offset by creation of new roles, more than making up for net losses, according to Goldman Sachs.

With AI and robotic agents, work as we know it, will never be the same.