There was also the hand made rolls Royce cars and the other robot assisted manufactured luxury cars. Which one suffered from poor quality perception (for good reason)? Automation can reduce errors and shoddiness.
Sure, for most things. I am finding this not to be the case with things like furniture, clothing, small finer metalworks that require something like a blacksmith, food, soap, etc.
I am not underestimating them, I am planning on it. All my capital investments are in automated equipment, that I know how to operate myself, and that are flexible in their use - they can make things for many industries, out of many materials.
The future is high mix short run manufacturing. Just in Time. Anything that has to be shipped and not flown, is never going to be 'just-in-time'. Locally made, custom just for you. This does not mean that automation won't be involved. The automation is the core of it - without the miracle of CNC (praise be!) the local guy wouldn't stand a chance.
My customers don't seem to care if it is robot welded or not, or made in the US or not. I doubt 99% of them could tell me which parts are robot welded and which ones are manually welded. Everyone claims that they care, but the top sellers in my segment are all made in Asia. So the evidence does not match the claims. The customer just cares if its what they want. Thats it. We use the "long tail" strategy in our market segment to differentiate with offshore competitors. We offer 3x the part numbers, and 2x the vehicle coverage, plus we do custom sizes and the others do not.
Automation, and flexible use machines, let me change styles to follow trends, and get low labor costs without resorting to offshore. We can customize parts one a one-by-one basis for clients if needed, and we do so usually once or twice a day.
I view my factory like a breakfast restaurant. I know I am going to sell a bunch of eggs, bacon, potatoes, toast - but I don't know exactly how much, or in what configuration. I have a menu, and I know what is roughly the most popular on any given day, but I never know exactly what the customer will want, and it doesn't matter since we make it fresh for them right when they order. I keep the raw materials in stock, we build about half our units on a fixed schedule based on statistical high movers, and the other half is built to order from the orders that day. There is minimal WIP on the floor, I try to keep it under 2 weeks.
Given the choice, people want to get things personalized just for them, or to have something a little unique. How many t-shirts do you see people wear on any given day, and how many are the exact same? Almost none, yet the basic form is the same for all.
TL;DR - things will be fine. Humans will have jobs. Have robots, hire humans.