This discussion has been had many a time on this forum and it always seems to disintegrate into the same old arguments.
On one side you have your capitalists, libertarians, she'll be right mate, coz it always has been arguments. People will be re-trained, work other "jobs", do less hours, the supply and demand will make everything takes care of itself. We can explain all this way with basic economics, analysing past revolutions, and some quotes from "experts" on the subject ....
On the other, you have those thinking about the social implications of what a robotic (and more importantly AI) future means to the human race. Suggestions are thrown around about taxes, universal incomes, unemployment, poverty, etc, etc.
Without doubt, we are progressing full steam ahead into robotics. Anything to do with manual labour (particularly if it has a set process/procedure) will be replaced. It doesn't matter if its construction, food making/serving, transport, number crunching and even medical practice such as surgery. In this particular iteration, people WILL be replaced, they WILL need to re-skill/re-train, but there WILL still be other work that needs to be done and requires humans to do so. In this scenario, things will be much like previous technological advances/revolutions.
AI however, is another beast unto itself. When you have advanced AI combined with robotics (which itself will continue to evolve), you will surely arrive at a point in time when 99% of human production activity will become superfluous.
The robots/AI will survey the ground, organise the drilling, analyse the results, organise the mining, do the actual mining, take care of all the logistics. Materials will arrive at the factories where they will be completely received by the bots, processed, turned into widgets and placed for sale on the market (which has also been analysed) all by bots. Robots will break down, but with advanced robotics/AI, they will repair themselves (note this has traditionally been one of the re-skill areas - i.e. human servicing of the new tech). I challenge you to come up with occupations that will require humans (other than government and ownership of corporations that employ the bots) ...
At this point, the economists amongst us, will parrot out lines about labour becoming so cheap as a result of this, that it will once again be attractive for companies to hire humans. As Big A.D already pointed out, this is highly unlikely as there will still be multiple advantages of having bots over humans. They can work 24/7, don't complain, don't need sick/annual/whatever leave, no worries on OH&S, have a one time capital cost and will produce things exactly the same every time. Let's not mention that the robots will be building themselves (as well as the aforementioned extraction of materials, etc) and that should mean that robots are cheap to purchase.
Given this is a discussion forum, its my belief that the only thing up for discussion is the social impact and ways to deal with such. Shutting down such conversation with the capitalist view of she'll be right mate, it always has been and always will be, adds absolutely nothing to a forum that is already growing stale. Fact is, no-one knows/knew the future. Not Bastiat, Einstein, Nostradamus or even Billy Meier. Robotics/AI is likely to disrupt the human race more than any other previous advance and discussing the implications of such does not mean that someone is a chicken little who can only envisage dystopian futures.
Finally, for myself, I would like to think that I'll be able to seize the right opportunities to use robotics/AI to my advantage. I will look for any and all opportunities to create profits from such so that at some point in the future I can be on the beach sipping margaritas ....... but doing so of my own making and not hoping that government wealth redistribution will enable us all to do so.
