Jobs done by half the workers in Japan could be performed by artificial intelligence or robots in 10 to 20 years, according to recent estimates by a Japanese think tank and researchers at Britain's University of Oxford.

Together with Michael Osborne and Carl Benedikt Frey, co-directors of the Oxford Martin Program on Technology and Employment, the Nomura Research Institute examined the potential impact of computerization on 601 types of jobs in Japan that currently employ 42.8 million people, Kyodo News Agency reported on Saturday.

They calculated the number of jobs for which more than 66 percent of the tasks could be done by AI or robots. And they found 49 percent of workers in Japan could be replaced by computers.