I am responding to “There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale.”
In this usage I read the term “AI” to more broadly refer to all advancements in machine intelligence, not narrowly “agentic LLMs” as you’ve said. In the farming automation world it’s very clear that advances in machine learning and multimodal LLMs will enable the use of expanded automation.
In particular the Global South is often seen as a field for investment where governments make international development deals with western governments to provide farming automation equipment in exchange for debt. Then western companies bring in equipment and establish extractive industries while displacing local subsistence farmers. Now alienated from their land, the poor farmers often end up with little choice but to work in new factories also established through these practices.
Robotics as a field is obviously growing. It’s long been common for global south governments to displace their own poor to make space for multinational development deals, And this will only expand as embodied intelligence becomes more capable in the real world.