Probably not the secretary, accountant or dispatcher whom they replace. And for every programmer created to develop for these devices, there will be 10, 100, even 1,000 desk jobs which will vanish.

The best and brightest will find jobs as these programmers; the rest will be left to fend for themselves - to find another meaningless job with a tiny wage, so they can live.

This, as something of a tangent, is why I support basic income.

Someone has to program a specific task for a specific robot. Then that can be copied over almost instantly all over the world to thousands or more physical robots.

Making a copy of the software for a robot can be considered as cheap as sending an e-mail. Hardware is hard, but that might change too in the near future.

I'd be interested in how the economics will work, since we already sometimes have silly pricing for software/music/eBooks. Piracy/DRM for robots?

If a lot of people went into programming, then it would become the new working class.

In places like India or Argentina, the median salary for programmers and computer scientists is really low(1/20th of theUS). Its only a stronghold for so long.