I think a lot more would be automated by now had the right incentive structures been in place, there are still tonnes of low hanging fruit in areas that are to

I think a lot more would be automated by now had the right incentive structures been in place, there are still tonnes of low hanging fruit in areas that are to small or too diverse to productize. One example I remember is a company I worked for that had a lot of people doing data entry, basically reading faxes from a variety of sources that could have been 90% automated by OCR and some trivial AI. It was too specialized for any off the shelf system but too expensive for the company to invest in automating. I probably could have built an automated system but it would take a huge time investment to get to a point where they'd be willing to buy it and they would likely not pay enough to support me full time. Now imagine if I could retain some rights to my automation to my automation efforts? I could take one of these data entry positions and with a bit of my own time invested I could probably automate 20% of the work fairly quickly, freeing up enough time to further automate things without sacrificing my own time. Sooner or later enough would be automated that I could start doing multiple jobs if the company were willing to license it. Eventually I could take on another entry level role and start the process over. I would come out in front, the company would come out in front and the world would be more efficient, but the incentives just aren't there.