It's just the matter of cost. Soulless machines are just more expensive to design and slower to roll to market. Some of the technologies (like self-checkout registers at supermarkets) make no economic sense until a certain price point is reached.
Who pays for those higher skilled workers?
Can you get enough of them?
People deal with unplanned for interactions with people better than a machine, they're much more flexible.
Liability, you can go either way on that.
I think it's an open question still, when you get down to low enough skill and pay.
Edit: People are the ultimate low skilled contingent worker. A pre-programmed AI-equivalent in every box.