Rich and powerful warn robots are coming for your jobs

more automation means fewer potential immigrants to Japan (as if anyone would go but anyway) thus any success in automation means any potential population will continue to drop even more.

There is no purpose in automation. No tax revenue as there are no employees. The state will have unemployed and no funds. Companies will not have revenue if too many are unemployed.

It's not about if you can, it's about if it makes any sense to do so. As long as people need jobs it can't.

Billionaire investor Steve Cohen said it would take awhile before robots replace stockpickers like himself.

Herein lies the problem. Most people are quick to assume that other people's jobs can be automated, but when you ask them about their own job they will tell you that their work is far too complex for a robot to replace them. In reality, most jobs that humans do are quite complex when you take the time to properly understand them.

When it comes to the long term threat, there's also a tendency to focus only on the technology and to ignore politics. The simple political solution to this problem would be for the government to mandate that any company which records 'x' amount of profit must hire 'x' amount of human workers, even if they are just monitoring the robots. Japan and many other countries already have mandatory quotas like this in place to protect supposedly 'less valuable' disabled workers. Going even further, we could ban the import and sale of products and services made entirely by robots in the same way that we ban goods made by child labour.

Welcome robots! You're about to make our lives so much easier.

Think back to the time before the wheel was invented. Try to imagine how many people it would take to move heavy stuff. Then the wheel came along and all those jobs were lost but nobody cared because those were lousy jobs.

This is history repeating itself.

The simple political solution to this problem would be for the government to mandate that any company which records 'x' amount of profit must hire 'x' amount of human workers, even if they are just monitoring the robots.

Why not just tax their profits and pay a wage to those who are not working? Creating jobs just for the sake of creating jobs seems a backwards step. Ideas such as a universal minimum wage seem more forward looking.

I always have a little chuckle when I compare it to the following.

You have wagon, but it does not have any wheels, thus pushing it requires more strength and takes more time. So to still transport the same amount of goods you would need more people, having more jobs than you would have with the invention of the wheel. And then we have horses that could pull or push the wagons, so the horses took their jobs the same way robots do/will.

Want more jobs? make a pyramid or two. (or a wall if you fancy)