Why is that ?have we no sense of imagination ? Or is it that the claim is just an easy comforting truism(that preservers the current order) and nothing but ?
But robots of the future will not be designed to do one thing, as cars are (press throttle, move forward). They will be complex, autonomous decision-making machines, something the world really has never dealt with. I imagine the support infrastructure needed to deal with such machines would more closely resemble the healthcare industry than the automotive industry.
For example, you would have your highly trained specialists as I mentioned, but also generalists skilled at diagnosing and repairing common issues, and of course support staff needed to assist them in their jobs. Thus you have tiers of skill so that if a robot displaces a housekeeper(for instance) he doesn't have to get a PhD in order to find a new job in the robotics industry that made him obsolete.
Basically, the future is unknowable. But as Marc Andressen likes to say, human needs and wants are unlimited. As long as people can provide for the wants and needs of others via jobs, there will be jobs.
I'd take it one step further, in fact. If we imagine the robot dominated future that so many people fear, it stands to reason (given human nature) that robot-produced goods and services will be viewed as inferior, cheaper, or less personal than human-produced goods. Robots and AI are by nature easily copyable, thus fungible. Sure, AI can be trained and tailored to specific needs, but competitors can simply copy the successful training methods once they are apparent.
A widespread perception of AI/robot produced goods/services as inferior or less personal will happen irrespective of the actual merits of of the products and services in question. There will probably be a few field-specific exceptions to this, but primarily in areas where exact precision, scalability, or replicability are the primary competitive advantages (precision machinery, automobiles, aircraft, etc).
In industries that are very cost or precision-sensitive, robotic automation will do well. In industries sensitive to quality of service, humans will still be useful.
Ordinary products such as food & clothing, and especially services, can be marketed based on a "human touch and taste" differentiating advantage that robot-based corporations will be unable to compete with. You can go into RoboDonalds and order your hamburger with all the ingredients you want, and that will be fine. Or you can go into a traditional steakhouse, talk with the chef about the cuts of meat available, select one, tell him/her how you'd like it prepared, and enjoy conversing with the waitstaff. Until AI can hold human-like conversations and understand all the nuances of human communication, any product or service that differentiates itself based on a non-trivial communication with the customer will be robust to AI/robotic disruption.
OK ,it's possible that robot produced goods will be perceived as inferior, but judging the popularity of today's hand made goods vs machines made goods it might not be a big factor - but who knows.
It's also possible that people would be interested in being serviced by a human and not a robot. It's interesting to think such a world, where more than 50% of your wages are purely going towards buying relationships - and most of the work time of people is purely selling relationships. It seems pretty lousy - but it's possible.
For example, 100,000 truckers are put out of work by a truck that drives itself. There might be 100,000 other jobs created - we might all get to work less one day - but for those 100,000 truckers, the number of them becoming automation developers is probably pretty low.
One thing is for damn sure though, we can be quite certain of the jobs a robot can do right now and that we are just waiting for price is right.
And heck, i'm pretty sure there would be decent readership for such stories. But there aren't none as far as i can tell.
It's still a work in progress, but it's here if anyone wants a look: http://startjumper.com.
Not saying you're right or wrong, but our inability to envision future jobs, or lack thereof, doesn't mean much one way or the other.
Yes, I do. Before that there were already people that spent most of their time creating algorithms, and programming machines.