What perspective are you viewing it from? The perspective of the worker is not the one that thus far funds or initiates any robot-driven initiatives, so I'm no

What perspective are you viewing it from? The perspective of the worker is not the one that thus far funds or initiates any robot-driven initiatives, so I'm not sure why the effect on them would be used to judge success. For those who did fund and initiate the move toward robotics, it has been extremely successful, driving large amounts of money away directly into the hands of executives and shareholders (who are primarily financial services companies). As far as whether the moves will be undone or whether they will cease to be increased going forward, it's that perspective that it is necessary to take. One factor that so many analysts across the spectrum fail to account for is something that I think is going to lead to a great surprise for a lot of people. All of this technology, all of the data platforms, robots, etc.... it's CHEAP. Everyone focuses so closely on how these technologies will affect the factory floor, the centralized gigaproduction facility, they completely miss the fact that the distributed back yard shed operation can outcompete them. It doesn't have the overhead and the limitations of those centralized factories. Advancements in distribution, shipping, and logistics are available to everyone for a pittance. Services like Uber at their heart provide nothing but some server space for some software. That 'server space' can have its necessity disappear into the ether with distributed computing platforms simply aggregating the compute of its users. Not something currently regularly done, but there is no technical impediment to such a thing. And software like that has a tendency to just pop out of nowhere some weekend and change the landscape immediately. The software part could be handled like any FOSS project. Uber is a center in a system that doesn't need a center. (I'm not saying centers don't have advantages, I am saying that their presence is not an iron clad 100% absolute necessity for the system to work.) At the same time companies have been abandoning every bit of value they ever offered to workers since the 1980s, welching on pensions they tricked people into working for them with, adopting wage stagnation so that workers have to jump ship every few years to remain solvent, etc... technology has been making it such that those displaced workers could pretty easily outcompete the companies that ejected them. The companies are still restrained by Baby Boomer execs who refuse to leave and refuse to abandon the management practices drilled into them in relation to manufacturing and retail business. They're blind to the outrageous overhead and inefficiencies of their offices and practices because, as far as they see it, 'this is how it has always been done.' It is impossible to predict when any of these things will come home to roost. It is also nearly impossible to explain just how large of a change we are in for. It is on the scale of the Industrial Revolution which created central factories in the first place. That led to urban centers exploding in population. It changed how we built houses. It changed the moral norms of society. It changed the food we ate. It changed how we married. It changed family structure. It is not much of an exaggeration to say it changed everything. And now it's fundamental tenets (that production must be centralized, that distribution networks must be built, that large numbers of relatively low education physical laborers capable of extended periods of mindless repetitive actions are necessary, etc) no longer hold. It will probably take a long time. And it will unfortunately probably come with a great deal of conflict and bloodshed. That's just based on how history has gone in the past with changes of this scale.