[pdkl95]

Those historical examples are about the automation of physical effort. The ability to automate tasks that require mental effort is fundamentally new to humanity.

For a better overview, see CGP Grey's explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

[murtnowski]

There have been plenty of historical examples of automated mental effort from Wall Street trading, to telephone switching, to legal research, to librarians, record keeping, accounting, logistics management, forestry overwatch, security, safety regulation, meter reader, parking enforcement, communication, art, banking, many examples throughout history.

[barrkel]

Sure; but the things you describe are levers, not automata.

We are approaching the point where there are humans who are not needed physically, and not smart enough to do something that can't be automated. It's a slowly rising tide.

[slededit]

Calculators automate at least some "mental effort" and have existed since 2000BC. Perhaps you mean creativity? But even in that case automating composition of music was experimented with as early as the 1960s.

Certainly our ability to automate is much more refined than in the past, but I fail to see the fundamental shift you describe.

[detaro]

If you count variants of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspiel, "composition" with less mental effort is even older.